Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor
In 1897, serious difficulties began to appear in front of Rachmaninoff who was already working as a composer, pianist and conductor at the age of 24. After he completed First Symphony in 1897, it was severly denouonced by critics—one even mocked the piece might have been produced by ”a Conservatory in Hell.” Young Rachmaninoff was devastated, also with financial problems.
In January of 1900, when Rachmaninoff visited Leo Tolstoy, the legendary writer, and played the piano for him, Leo Tolstoy responded to Rachmaninoff’s performance by saying, “ Tell me, is such music needed by anybody?… I must tell you how I dislike it all!… Beethoven is nonsense, Pushkin and Lermontov also.”
Rachmaninoff fell into the deep hollow of depression. Although later in that day, Tolstoy apologized about his rudeness, Rachmaninoff stopped composing altogether. From 1900, he suffered through major depression and the writer’s block. Writer’s block is a phenomenon involving temporary loss of ability to begin or continue writing, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity. Major depression, or clinical depression is not only characterized by a persistent low mood, loss of interest in usual activities and diminished ability to experience pleasure, but also impulse to commit a suicide.
Fortunately, Rachmaninoff’s cousin introduced Dr.Nikolai Dahl, himself an amateur musician, and Dahl with combined the technique of hypnosis, shared pleasant conversations about music. Rachmaninoff began to improve rapidly. By summer he had started on the new concerto.
That new concerto completed after the conquest of serious illness is Piano Concerto in C minor. This piece begins gloomiously and stormily—may be to express his depression, but gradually transforms to express the joy and delight of life, and finishes grandly with an overflowing joy.
Whenever I listen to this concerto—I am listening right now, too—I can always feel in details Rachmaninoff’s great pain by trampling of his music so his life, and later, his as ever ardent love and delight in music.
This is my favorite piano piece. :-)
2 years ago • 0 notes