Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30
I. Allegro ma non tanto
II. Intermezzo
III. Finale

INTERMISSION

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68
I. Un poco sostenuto; Allegro
II. Andante sostenuto
III. Un poco allegretto e grazioso
IV. Adagio; Più andante; Allegro non troppo, ma con brio

There is a perception, warranted or otherwise, that the orchestral canon is the musical equivalent of Mount Rushmore: enormous, unchanging, and carved out of one massive block of granitic genius. In truth, however, while geological metaphors might be useful in helping us to understand the enduring power of the true greats, but repertoire is always in flux. Entire bodies of work can be subsumed by the rubble of changing tastes or smashed by tectonic forces; others emerge as if by erosion from the neglect or misunderstandings of the past. And this happier fate might he the case with both of the works on this program: Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in C minor and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor. Now acknowledged masterpieces, both were initially received with lukewarm praise or even outright hostility.

“Not a great nor memorable proclamation,” sniffed one critic after Rachmaninoff himself premiered the Piano Concerto No. 3 with the New York Symphony Society on November 28, 1909. It’s telling too, that Rachmaninoff only took to the bench after its dedicatee, Josef Hoffman, declined the honour, saying simply that it “wasn’t for” him. Brahms’s symphonic debut won a more favourable response, but conductor Hans von Bülow undercut its virtues by calling it “Beethoven’s Tenth”. The comparison is justified: when asked about his work’s similarity to Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 in D minor, an irritated Brahms snapped back “Any ass can see that.”

Its distinctiveness has grown over time, and as Victoria Symphony music director Christian Kluxen points out, “Both works need long-distance thinking.” He’s speaking specifically about how to negotiate their complexities on the stage, but those words also ring true when looking at their status in musical history.

“With Brahms’ First Symphony, I don’t really like the phrase ‘Beethoven’s Tenth’, because it makes Brahms sound like the next logical step in a history book, as if this symphony simply had to arrive after Beethoven,” Kluxen argues. “And what about all the other great symphonic music written between Beethoven 9 and Brahms 1? Brahms and others might have mentioned this in elated moments, but I don’t think it reflects anything real in the creative process that I see happening in this symphony.

“The fact that Brahms took so long to write it has something more personal to it,” he continues. “This was not a composer casually entering the symphonic tradition. He knew exactly what he was up against (and it was not just Beethoven), and he could not accept anything half-finished from himself. He had already tested it through, for example, the Serenades, and Clara Schumann was certainly part of that creative process around him. With Brahms, I find it difficult to separate the technical, artistic, and emotional sides completely. Clara and Robert Schumann are present in his life and work in so many ways—sometimes openly, sometimes underneath. The horn call in the finale, which Brahms sent to Clara, is one of those moments where the personal and the musical seem very close. How much that shaped the actual composition is impossible to measure, but it belongs to the world of the piece. Again, Clara was certainly part of the process. But what kind of influence she had on him, I’m not sure. It might simply have put more pressure on him than what was fair.”

Rachmaninoff, who supported his compositional activities by touring as a piano virtuoso, certainly supplies more than ample pressure on both soloist and orchestra in the Piano Concerto No. 3. As Kluxen aptly points out, it is “one of the great mountains” of piano literature—and not an easy work to come to terms with for conductors, either.

“The difficulty is not simply ‘accompanying’ the soloist,” he says. “These concertos are so symphonically written that the orchestra is not just a background. Rachmaninov clearly wants a close interplay between piano and orchestra. That is also the danger. The piano can disappear inside the dense texture that is meant to support it. So the task is not only to make the orchestra play softer, but to make the score transparent enough that the pianist’s lines and direction can be heard. Sometimes it is balance, sometimes timing, sometimes knowing which orchestral voices must come through and which must get out of the way. And sometimes the conductor can’t even hear the piano. A colleague once told me that, in desperate situations, he would lean his back against the piano, so that when he could not hear it, he could at least feel the vibrations. How very Beethovenesque! I have not tried that yet, but perhaps it is a good emergency plan. But let us be honest: the pianist has the hardest job. The conductor’s job is to make sure that all the effort is not lost.”

Both the Brahms and the Rachmaninoff “deal with the pressure of making a large form feel necessary,” Kluxen adds. “In Rachmaninoff, the soloist almost has to sing through this huge orchestral world. In Brahms, you feel a composer trying to make his first symphonic statement with absolute depth. In both pieces there is virtuosity, but the real point is not display. It is architecture, control, and the ability to make something difficult feel inevitable.”

What is also inevitable is that the Victoria audience is going to be treated to magnificent performances. Kluxen’s lengthy immersion in the symphonic works of Brahms and his mentor Schumann has already resulted in stellar iterations of the former’s Symphony No. 3 in F major and German Requiem, among other gems, and when it comes to Rachmaninoff, Marc-André Hamelin has literally written the book. It’s his fingerings that are used in the publisher G. Henle’s definitive edition of the Russian master’s compositions for piano. With both works, we are in the best of all possible hands.

Notes by Alex Varty