Among the many album releases marking the 150th anniversary of Serge Rachmaninoff’s birth, Yuja Wang’s hot-off-the-press recording of the composer’s œuvre for piano and orchestra with the Losa Angeles Philharmonic and their Music Director Gustavo Dudamel is one to arouse some very special interest. Heralding the year-long celebration, the pianist – teaming up with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin – presented us with quite unprecedented feat by performing all four concerti and the Paganini Rhapsody in a row in single marathon concert at Carnegie Hall in January.
Some weeks later in Los Angeles, Wang reprised the cycle – this time within more traditional series of concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall – with Deutsche Grammophon recording team documenting the performances on her new album, released today in physical and intangible formats alike. The present recording marks the second joint endeavor from this line-up; their previous album take being the 2020 premiere rendition of John Adams’s Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? (2018).
In his five works for piano and orchestra, Rachmaninoff came to epitomize the late-romantic concertante scheme, presenting us with a series of red-heated works embedded with gorgeous autumnal color, sweeping melodic lines, dark-hued bite and profound nostalgia. Although very much products of their time, the concerti and the rhapsody have nevertheless proved timeless, inspiring performers and audiences from one generation to another.
Shaping the cycle covered the entirety of Rachmaninoff’s creative life – more or less – beginning in 1891 with the first version of the first concerto and concluding in 1941 with the final version of the fourth. A fifty-year arch between different worlds – musical and otherwise – the timespan enclosed within the composer’s five milestone scores is remarkable indeed.
To begin from the beginning, the album edition opens with the revised account of Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, op. 1 (1890-91/1917). Composed while Rachmaninoff was still a student at the Moscow Conservatory and dedicated to his piano teacher Alexander Siloti, the concerto went through substantial transformations – its finale being almost copletely rewritten – in the course of revisions carried out in the fall of 1917, in the midst of the October Revolution. Even in its initial version, the concerto was quite a thing to spearhead a musical catalogue, and the Fassung letzter Hand – the last music Rachmaninoff wrote in Russia before his exile into the West – takes things to the next level, as the seasoned composer-performer takes another look at his score.
What the First Concerto may lack in subtlety, it does gain in intensity. Tempestuous and brooding, with lyrical second subject embedded, the Vivace opening movement unfolds with steadfast commitment from the soloist and the orchestra alike, lending music with flourishes and brilliance, while paying heed to all those reflective interludes in equal measure. Keeping up with the latter ambiance, Wang, Dudamel and the LA Phil make the most of the relatively brief Andante second movement, displaying the art of musical conversation at its finest.
In the Allegro vivace finale, Rachmaninoff’s revised score departs from his youthful Griegian models, coming up with a sound last movement, retaining aptly fresh appeal while displaying solid command over the material at hand. This fusion is carried beautifully into the recorded performance; one imbuing the music with spacious energy. A relatively recent addition to Wang’s repertoire, the concerto is given in a reading of spirited dedication.
Up next, another revised score – i.e. Piano Concerto No. 4, op. 40 (1926/1941) – is heard. As it happened, Rachmaninoff’s rethink of the concerto, written in Long Island, was to remain his final compositional statement. Premiered in March 1927, with the composer as soloist and Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, the original version – the composer’s first major work written during his exile – had rather unfavorable critical reception, and was only published with notable cuts. However, the composer remained dissatisfied with the concerto, and eventually only took the task of making it right late in his life.
The end result is quite different from Rachmaninoff’s previous forays to the genre. Being a late feat, the score bears certain newly-found textural clarity and rhythmic acuteness, as demonstrated by the soloist’s chordal opening theme and the orchestra’s fanfare-like responses, out of which a movement of buoyant tapestries is drawn. Marvelously orchestrated, the instrumental fabric unraveled around the solo piano’s agile meditations makes splendid use of the fairly standard line-up involved.
Regarding both versions, the concerto was mostly composed mostly in New York – where musical sensibilities were quite different from the Russia of Rachmaninoff’s youth – which may explain the much of the new look of the score, its Gershwinesque episodes included. Embraced wholeheartedly, the opening movement’s peculiarities are sound out in all naturalness by Wang, the orchestra and Dudamel, their clear-cut reading being well served by focused engineering. A color-clad account, free of all heavy-handedness, the opening track of the concerto calls for instant repeat.
Both the central Largo and the concluding Allegro vivace bear almost cinematic aura, coming off as soundtrack to some imaginary piece of film noir where romance and danger meet. Ever well-shaped, the solo part unfolds with flowing lyricism and proper bite, to a captivating effect. Throughout the recorded performance, the energy levels between the soloist and the orchestra are immaculately lined-up. To point out just one example of all the subtlety found among the ranks of the LA Phil, those genuine pianissimo horns in the second movement’s close are absolutely spot-on.
Closing disc one, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, op. 43 (1934) is heard in such terrific account, where not only the text, but also the dramaturgy of the score are thoroughly internalized by everybody involved. The Rachmaninoff masterpiece – perhaps – the score assumes the shape of an almost-concerto, given in one continuous arch of 24 variations on the concluding piece in the series of Caprices for Solo Violin (1802-27) by Niccolò Paganini.
Within these variations, one is to find all things quintessentially Rachmaninoff – stunning keyboard brilliance, full orchestral technicolor, aching lyricism and gripping sarcasms – all bound together into tremendous nocturnal quest into realms of pure, dark-hued fantasy. There is a lot of Edgar Allan Poe in the music, not least in those two full-blown eruptions into Dies irae – the omnipresent plainchant haunting the composer’s entire output.
Composed in Switzerland in the summer of 1934 and premiered in the following November with Rachmaninoff as soloist, joined by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski, followed by RCA Victor recorded first, the Paganini Rhapsody has been dearly loved ever since.
Concealed within the sequence of variations, a spellbound concertante ballet is conceived, in which the solo piano and the orchestra dance away through musical landscapes of dazzling variety. Some of the variations are fleetingly brief, while others open into almost standalone episodes; the 18th variation being – famously – a case in point. Interestingly, the first variation is heard before the theme proper, enhancing the organic appeal of the musical chain.
As recorded here, the score is given in all its dusk-shrouded splendor by Wang and the LA Phil under Dudamel – their teamwork being praiseworthy in this music, which suddenly sounds like it was written yesterday. A rediscovery par excellence, this is a Paganini Rhapsody to die for.
Coupled on disc two, the two Rachmaninoff giants, Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, op, 18 (1900-01) and Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, op, 30 (1909) are found in towering readings.
The Second Concerto marked Rachmaninoff’s return to composition following a three-year hiatus, brought forth by the disaster-of-a-premiere of his First Symphony (1895), given in March 1897. Struggling with depression for quite some time, the composer eventually rediscovered his metier and vocation, while embarking upon composing a new piano concerto. Received with roaring enthusiasm upon its partial premiere in Moscow in December 1900, followed by another triumph with the first performance of the completed work some ten months later.
Introduced by the soloist’s magical, bell-like chords, the Second Concerto opens into wondrous Moderato vistas of melodic agility and soaring instrumental poetry, zenithing in tempestuous climaxes and cooling down to stirring meditations. In the central Adagio sostenuto, the roles of melody and accompaniment are exchanged between the soloist and orchestra, calling forth performers closely attuned to one another, as on this recording.
To bring the concerto home, an Allegro scherzando third movement provides us with finale proper, taking its thematic material on a good long tour before resolving into triumphant close.
Listening to the these three movements grow to their full potential here, it becomes ever so easy to fall in love with this performance, which never overdoes nor undermines, but yields to beauteous clarity even in the most layered passages. Rhythmically admirably intricate and marvelously aligned, Wang and the Dudamel team conjure up a performance to remember.
Composed in the summer and the fall of 1909, the Third Concerto was first staged in New York City in performances with Rachmaninoff as soloist joined by Walter Damrosch and Gustav Mahler, respectively, on the podium. The most expansive of the composer’s concertos, the piece is one of the hardest – in not the hardest – nut to crack in the repertoire, thanks to its enormous virtuosity and peerless expressive range.
The three movements have technical challenges in abundance, as the composer lays everything on the table, coming up with a score, where everything seems to flow organically from its the concerto’s rocking opening measures. Such is the suggestive power of the music that one in soon convinced that once upon a time the gods of autumn summoned Rachmaninoff to their woodland throne room to impose upon him the task of turning their beloved season into musical sounds.
Wistful and steadfast, the Third Concerto conveys a huge range of emotions, channeled into instrumental theater of astonishing scope and scale. On the album, the massive solo part is served with thunderous poetry by Wang, who totally owns the piece, as do the orchestra and Dudamel, their joint venture providing just the response needed to really bring this music to life.
An album to cherish – in terms of performance and engineering alike – this is a Rachmaninoff party not to be missed. Despite being widely recorded, there are not too many releases out there displaying such inextinguishable spirit as this one. Combined with utmost virtuosity – pianist and orchestral – sometimes everything just clicks.
Yuja Wang, piano
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, op. 1 (1890-91/1917)
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, op, 18 (1900-01)
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, op, 30 (1909)
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 4, op. 40 (1926/1941)
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, op. 43 (1934) for piano and orchestra
Recorded at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA in February 2023
Deutsche Grammophon 4864759 (2023), 2 CDs
© Jari Kallio
AIM - Adventures in Music 
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