Glazunov is remembered today as a second rate composer and a fourth rate conductor. Like so many Russian artists, he spent much of his life at the bottom of a vodka bottle. In 1897 he weighed nearly 400 pounds. However, the Bolshevik Revolution and the civil war and famine that followed trimmed his weight to a svelte 185. Unfortunately, Glazunov was ill suited to conduct this piece.
The first performance went poorly and made the First Symphony one of music’s great shipwrecks. Sergei was horrified with what he heard. He tried to find a location in the hall where he couldn’t hear the butchering of his child. In an era before air conditioning, there were windows in concert halls that could be opened. Sergei found one and crawled out onto a fire escape to flee the disaster. He could still hear it. He closed the window. He could still hear it. Finally, he put his hands over his ears and spent the next hour outside.
The reviews the next day were devastating.
”If there had been a conservatory in hell, and if one of the students were given an assignment to compose a programmatic symphony on the theme of ‘The Seven Egyptian Plagues’, and if the student had composed a symphony somewhat similar to Rachmaninov’s symphony, he would have brilliantly fulfilled the assignment and thrilled the inhabitants of hell.” – Cesar Cui
It is only because of this famous review that Cui is remembered at all. His songs are almost forgotten, even inside Russia.
Sergei’s account of the debacle is even worse.
”The despair that filled by soul would not leave me. My dreams of a brilliant career lay shattered. My hopes and confidence were destroyed.”
The symphony lay forgotten until 1945, two years after Sergei’s death, when two professors at the Conservatory in St. Petersburg, then Leningrad, found the orchestral parts in the basement. They put the piece back together in a critical edition, and the symphony was premiered in the Soviet Union to great acclaim. It finally came to America in 1961 when Eugene Ormandy conducted the American premiere in Philadelphia. It turns out that the problem was Glazunov, not Rachmaninov. It’s a good symphony, and with the right conductor, it would have made a fine splash.
The symphony’s score begins with a quite from the Bible. “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord.” The introduction sure sounds like that! The first subject is stated on the clarinet, and it’s gorgeous. At 2:40 the second subject appears in F Major, and it’s a sinuous melody that dispels the anger. The sunburst at 4:18 is hair raising! The development at 4:57 is worked up as a fugue, and the end of the development at 6:38 is magical where he doubles the piccolo and glockenspiel. At 7:47 he recaps, and in this recording Ashkenazy just rips into that first subject! At 10:34 he works the sunburst into the second subject, and at 11:15 all hell threatens to break loose. His coda is reminiscent of Tchaikovsky.
After a first movement like that, Rachmaninov puts his dance movement, a scherzo, in second place. It’s a light footed movement, and it’s the best movement in the piece.
The third movement is one of the great slow movements of Rachmaninov.
The finale is wild and bombastic, perhaps too much so.
This is a full recording of the symphony. Pour yourself a good stiff drink, and just wallow in the music.
Rachmaninov: Symphony #1 in D minor, Op. 13
The premiere of this symphony was such a setback that Sergei could not put pen to music paper for the next two years. It was a full three years before he could write a piece in which he was confident, and this began the period of his greatest works, to include the immortal Second Piano Concerto. But to do that, he needed to go to Germany to visit a famous psychiatrist. That’s for next week.
Thanks, Publius, for bringing us Rachmaninov. I’m listening to....
Rachmaninov: Symphony #1 in D minor, Op. 13