Before Rachmaninoff composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, he completed a 19th-century tone poem's volume-closing work, "Isle of the Dead," a somber masterpiece of painting in the history of music, which was as good in the 19th century as Schoenberg's "The Night of the Ascension," with a deathly intensity reminiscent of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony, and Mahler's Songs of the Dead Children. Rachmaninoff became vice-president of the Russian Royal Concertgebouw shortly after the premiere of Isle of the Dead, and the trip to the United States was at the invitation of an American friend of his, Henry Wolfe. Rachmaninoff was not quite happy to embark on this laborious journey. But when he thought of the smoke-breathing trains in the new land of America, and the bustling commercial atmosphere of the streets of New York, Rachmaninoff, who had just come from the bloody scenes of the February Revolution, felt that he seemed to be lacking in "material" enjoyment, and he even planned to buy an automobile with the proceeds of his performance tour in the United States. I once saw a picture of Rachmaninoff leaning against the piano standing, this is a tall and big Rachmaninoff (2 meters tall) and a similarly tall and wide piano, his face is a little long, serious expression, where there is no great Russian romantic poet Pushkin's youthful innocence of the eyes, but also without the Russian characteristic thick beard, but very much like an English gentleman. Rachmaninoff was born in a very prominent family, grandfather is a half-life general, father is an officer. Rachmaninoff this family name from Rachmani (rachmany), Russian means "gracious", "generous".
Rachmaninoff was an aristocrat in Moscow, but as a musician his music belonged to the Russian people, just as the novelist Tolstoy was an aristocrat, or the poetess Akhmatova a royal, rather than Tchaikovsky, who was financed by women all his life.
Rachmaninoff practiced the Third Piano Piece on a trans-Atlantic liner, and when he arrived in the United States, his patrons, the Waltham family, arranged 20 concerts for him. And the third performance of the piece was conducted by the newly appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic, Gustav Mahler, and the two master musicians stood together in a way that should be remembered as January 16, 1910 - when the two broad rivers of music, German and Russian, flowed together. Though their meeting did not become a myth like Beethoven meeting Mozart in the 18th century, it is considered a blessing for music lovers living in the 20th century.
The Third Piano Concerto was conceived in large part as a continuation of the Second Piano Concerto, such as the full-bodied mood and seething vitality of both, while the Third Piano Concerto is a work full of tense, dramatic developments, and Rachmaninoff's style is first apparent in the Third Piano Concerto, with a wide variety of piano techniques woven into the work, with light florid The variety of piano techniques woven into the work, light florals, passing phrases, double stops, dense polyphonic weaving, brisk and witty breaks and lots of grandiose chords, etc., are akin to the writing techniques employed by a modernist novelist, metaphorical, symbolic, stream of consciousness, surreal, but all in the service of the work. The first theme of the concerto's first movement is introduced by a very Russianized version of an ancient ceremonial song, and anyone who has been exposed to Pushkin's poetry or Tolstoy's novels - even if he has never heard of Rachmaninoff - will not fail to be struck by the tenderness, the warmth, and the meditative nature of the song's melody, thinking of the Russian herdsman's flute The Russian shepherd's flute rises in the vaults of the summer countryside, and the endless calm of the steppes. This songful theme became Rachmaninoff's most fascinating melody, the warmest sunshine of the twentieth century. The Russians heard it as the Czechs heard the "day and night flow" of the Volta River in Smetana's "My Motherland", and the Chinese heard "the bright moon shines among the pines" in "Reflecting the Moon in the Two Springs". However, this song-like theme soon loses its idyllic flavor, as it gradually develops in the first and second movements, with many disturbing elements added to it, as the singing piano becomes a contemplative one, and the beautiful Russian streams begin to merge into the magnificent Volga River. As the brass march harshly, the piano becomes a heavy hammer, and all the excitement, anger, unease, fear, disappointment, resistance and mourning are held aloft. The protagonist in the Australian movie "The Pianist" fainted on the spot during a recital playing the Piano Concerto No. 3, and you can imagine the force with which the work knocked the player down!
Rachmaninoff's visit to the United States in 1909 was a prelude to his later settlement there to escape the war and political disaster at home, and this Piano Concerto No. 3 is the last of the drummers that the times chose to make Rachmaninoff the final drummer of the piece; Rachmaninoff joins the ranks of the exiles who would become not just musicians, but spokesmen for the conscience and the morality of twentieth-century mankind! He is, as Keats said, "You are far among men." Disappear from humanity, from the crowd. Escape from the original crowd is a difficult thing, but escape is a silent protest against the existing environment. In "Less Than One," Brodsky recounts the experience of standing up in the middle of a class and walking out of the school doors one winter morning, and he remembers that what dominated his emotions at that moment was a sense of loathing born of always growing up, of always being controlled by everything around him. In addition, "there was that hazy but happy feeling evoked by the escape, by the sun-drenched street that you couldn't see at a glance." On the one hand, there is the melancholy of the Russian landscape, the Russian spring, the Russian snow, the Russian forests and lakes, and on the other, the Russian people dying of starvation from artillery fire, and the imminent collapse of a nation that has given birth to great men of letters and musicians like Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and many others. Accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, Brodsky said without pain, "In Russia it [civilization] has ended; and if I were to say that it ended in tragedy, then the primary basis would be the number of human sacrifices, the social and historical transformations that have descended to take them captive. In real tragedy, it is not the protagonists who die - it is the chorus that dies."
Rachmaninoff knew he could not shake off the old traditions of Russian culture, which had seeped into every part of his body like blood, and that even if he settled in the United States, the image of Russian music as lyrical and poignant would forever rise beneath his ten fingers on the piano. Rachmaninoff's heart-filled song of the Russian winter in his Piano Concerto No. 3 is Tchaikovsky's song of 1812, and Tolstoy's song of the peaceful land after the war.
We call the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 simply "Rach 3," and in Europe it is similarly shortened to "RACH 3," an unspoken acronym that is not only pragmatic but also loving. It's like calling a friend by his nickname. Rachmaninoff is a legendary figure, and the process of composing his first three piano concertos was accompanied by some of the greatest pains and joys of his life, but fortunately he remembered the pain before the sweetness. It is now impossible to gain any insight into the appreciative tastes of the late 19th century, especially musical habits combined with the ideological background of the times. We are now amazed that a work of such lesser distinction as "La I" was hailed in the fifth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music of the time as "a certain number of extremely popular compositions that seem to have been difficult to maintain for a long period of time during Rakhtaninov's life." How hard that categorical assessment hit Rachmaninoff at the time, so hard that he didn't pick up a pen and compose again for almost three years.
One person who needs to be mentioned is Lev Tolstoy. At a time when Rakhtaninov needed strength from the heart and mind, a friend introduced him to the author of "War and Peace". The old Tolstoy, who was about to turn 70 at the time, said to him: "Young man, can you imagine that everything is going well in my life? Can you suppose that I am free of worries, never hesitate and never lose faith? Do you really think that faith is always equal to strength? The truth is that we all have our moments of difficulty, but that's life! Keep your head up and stick to the path you're on."
This passage, which now seems like a Wang Guozhen quote, restored Rachmaninoff's confidence at the time, but then a disagreement between him and Tolstoy Sr. over an art song led to a disagreement in which Rachmaninoff's deep remorse evolved to the point that he had to see a psychiatrist, and he was referred to Dr. Dahl. Under the treatment of hypnotic therapy, Rachmaninoff passed the most painful phase of his life, and he drifted towards happiness in the following years: his Piano Concerto No. 2 was a modest success, and next, some time around the time he went to the United States to develop his career, he wrote the most brilliant piece of music of his life, La Trois, and found knowledge of the world of the New World in the Not only is it jaw-droppingly difficult to play, but the musical world it constructs for the listener is so varied and passionate that it has come to rival the impact that rock can have on a person.
Without giving you a detailed explanation of "Ra III," a modern person who has never been exposed to this piece only needs to listen to it three times to be completely mesmerized by the melodic weave of the song, which is as immensely enjoyable as experiencing the ups and downs of a rollercoaster ride.
When listening to "La San," it's as if each note is in its own optimal position, lighting up in stages under meticulous direction, one moment like the splendor of a Fourth of July salute as it fills the sky, and the next moment like the night sky that falls silent in the intervals between salutes as they finish the first and second batch and begin to load. You'll look forward to those things taking to the air again in a new form, and, you don't know how high the next splendor will go, because every time you listen to it, preferably during the climactic phase the excitement it brings to you isn't the same as what you experienced last time, it could be better, it could be worse, and each time it will be new.
Once upon a time, I compared Ra III to ocean waves. It is as if you are at the beach, you see a calm sea, some small waves start to appear, then you see some white ones rising and falling, then the wind and waves are a little bit bigger at the tip of the waves, when you feel the power of the wind, you find that the sea in front of you is no longer calm, two or three meters high waves start to appear, and a heavy rain descends on your head, and you are feeling all these soundly when you are thinking that all these will be transformed into A dozens of stories high when the huge waves, everything quietly calm down, the rain is over in general, the sea began to calm down again, and even you see a lot more people swimming on the beach, the blue sky, the sky do not know what thing appeared to the sky to a very fast speed over, at this time, when the people see what it is, a huge as the middle of the sky square wave, accompanied by the surrounding still calm sea, fabulously appeared in front of you, and thinking about that strange shock and the way the wave hit down next, you were all of a sudden y engulfed by the sea of music. Delightfully engulfed. You cry out into bubbles, you lose your attachment and flail into the deep blue.