Sergei Rachmaninoff was interested in both composition and the piano throughout his life, but it was primarily as a pianist that he made his reputation. He could confidently present his works for solo piano himself, but his early career as a composer for larger forces was rocky, with mixed critical reaction leading to periods of self-doubt and inactivity. Later in life, he would take up conducting in order to further promote his orchestral compositions (and his ultimately unsuccessful attempts at opera). As his surest source of income, however, his career as a concert pianist generally took priority, and while he did become a respected composer, he never became a prolific one. The Piano Concerto #2, one of his most successful works, comes from early in his career, following a brief period of inactivity brought on by the failure of the First Symphony. Combining the composer’s increasingly sophisticated understanding of the orchestra with characteristically brilliant writing for his own instrument, it captures the most endearing features of Rachmaninoff’s style.
Many composers contemporary with Rachmaninoff were exploring ways to expand the boundaries of traditional tonality and form. Debussy’s impressionistic Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, completed in 1894, is often said to have “awakened” modern music, and the more overtly revolutionary works of Schoenberg and Stravinsky were not many years behind. Rachmaninoff felt more comfortable with the established procedures of the nineteenth century. This may have been due to his rigorous, traditional conservatory training, his immersion in nineteenth-century repertoire as a pianist, or simply his artistic temperament. In any case, while his music is not regarded now as having been especially influential, that assessment has not compromised its ability to survive.
Rachmaninoff’s great capacity for lyricism and his tendency toward lush orchestration have made him, in the generations following his death, something of a “crossover” composer, with his work enjoying broader exposure than one ordinarily associates with “classical” music. Sound bytes from the Symphony #2 or the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini provide syrupy background for radio and television commercials or set the mood in department stores. Similarly, the famous Vocalise has been reworked into dozens of versions, not all of them tasteful. The second theme of the present concerto’s third movement, one of Rachmaninoff’s most elegant melodies, has reached a different group of music-lovers through its appropriation in the popular ballad, “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” While such associations help to sustain the composer’s reputation, they can also obscure our appreciation for his music’s place in history. Rachmaninoff wrote these melodies not for popular crooners, and not for clichéd use by the mass media, but for himself, in the spirit of a romantic century that the world had only recently begun to leave behind.