Subscription Concerts 2022-2023Program C
No. 1975 Subscription (Program C)

Rakhmaninov composed The Rock in the summer of 1893. A notable episode says the young composer met his idol Tchaikovsky and played this new piece on the piano for him who, greatly impressed, promised to conduct it. Sadly, this never happened due to the maestro's abrupt death in November 1893.
The Rock was inspired by Chekhov's novel On the Road having an epigraph (A golden cloud rested through a night / Upon the breast of the gigantic rock) from Lermontov's poem. Chekhov's sorrowful story is set in a snowy night when a man and a woman meet and understand each other at an inn but they make their adieu the next morning. Here the "rock" stands for the snow-covered man left alone. Rakhmaninov seems to freely depict the story with his shimmering orchestration. The sinister opening theme entrusted to bassoons and strings, together with the fluttering feminine melody given by flute, leads to the stormy brassy culmination.

[Kumiko Nishi]

For many composers after Beethoven, writing the "first" symphony has been a synonym with confronting a nemesis. And so was for Tchaikovsky. A fresh graduate from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, the young composer moved to Moscow in January 1866 to start teaching at the newly founded Moscow Conservatory some months later. He set to work on his First Symphony in March and spent three months toiling around the clock to complete it. However, he had to alter it taking tart advice from his senior musicians including Anton Rubinstein. The 1868 premiere of the full work was a success, but again Tchaikovsky revised it in 1874 to give birth to the third version which is performed at present.
To this symphony born after a long and hard labor, Tchaikovsky gave the picturesque title Winter Dreams. Also, the programmatic subtitles of the first two movements (Dreams of a Winter Journey and Land of Desolation, Land of Mist) are by him.
Abundant in tuneful melodies, the symphony consists of four movements. The opening Allegro is a fantastical sonata. Both the airy first theme exposed by flute and bassoon and the warm D-major second theme given by clarinet have a folky, charming outline. The next slow movement is a rondo (A–B–A–B–A) preceded by an ethereal introduction. The A section's pensive theme first appears with oboe, before being entrusted to cellos and then horns, so to say, in the manner of variation. This theme is derived from Tchaikovsky's early overture The Storm (1864). The next fluent Scherzo is in A–B–A form. The lightly bouncing main theme in C minor is revealed by violins divided in four parts, while the major-mode trio (central) section's graceful melody is in the waltz style. The finale begins with the slow, lugubrious introduction where bassoons and then violins quote the Russian folk song I'm planting some flowers, little one. Then comes next the main lively section in sonata form. Its valiant second theme introduced by bassoons and violas is also based on the folk song which is to be recalled gloriously by the whole orchestra during the dazzling conclusion.

[Kumiko Nishi]