Description
So think about this:
1. The introduction in the first movement isn’t a one-off; it returns in the opening of the third – that big pre-dominant prolongation (23:04), compete with the same slide from Ab to A and back the in piano and a C-Eb chromatic line (in the strings).
2. The first and second movements end on the same motif – a three-note rise and fall (C-D-C, G#-A-G#). Where’s this motif from? Well, it’s the opening of Mvt’s 1 first theme. As it turns out, Mvt 3’s first theme is also constructed almost entirely out of this motif (one of many connections between the first/last movements).
3. The second and third movements don’t share an introduction, exactly, but they both have introductions do the same thing – transition us out of the previous movement’s key into the next.
All of which is to say, the 2nd PC is a work that’s been doomed by beauty. Above everything else, it’s a work of monumental craft – the discipline in motivic manipulation (the unifying cadential figure that everyone knows, plus a lot more), the rhythmic inventiveness, the exotic harmonies integrated so seamlessly they’re barely noticeable. There’s a sense of inventive overspill; the material in the work exists in a constant state of development (the wildly varied recaps in the other movements), and even when it’s at its prettiest there’s always some Ravelian trick going on (the 3/4 polyrhythm in the 2nd movement’s piano accompaniment). The orchestration is also consistently lovely (the woodwind pulses in Mvt 2’s coda), even when you don’t quite hear it.
But because Rachmaninoff’s melodic gift is so openly on display here, you get the sense sometimes this work is a little disparaged compared to its siblings, as if popularity tarnishes it. This is nonsense: what’s good is just what sounds good – how many concerti manage to feature an astonishing melody in every movement? If the PC 2 was less immediately generous, if its material was darker or denser in the manner of the PC 3, it would probably be respected more. But for better or worse it excels at too many things at once, so that nobody fully takes it in.
(Read the analysis for this one – it was one of the funnest ones I’ve done!)
Shelley
00:00 – Mvt 1
10:47 – Mvt 2
22:30 – Mvt 3
Wild
33:55 – Mvt 1
43:14 – Mvt 2
53:35 – Mvt 3
There’s a generousness to Shelley’s playing that’s irresistible in works like this one. Tempi are on the brisk side, and yet there’s so much colour: the rhapsodic phrasing of Mvt 1’s second theme, the pearly, semi-detached articulation in fast passages, whisper-thin pianissimos (the ethereal top of the arch at 4:05, the gentle slip into the coda of Mvt 2). There’s even room for playfulness, as in the suddenly tapered initial run in Mvt 2’s final cadenza. The Scottish National Orchestra sounds consistently fantastic: the sound is big and about as close to natural as you get on a CD, while preserving lots of detail (the horns in Mvt 3’s recap at 26:31). Something that might not stand out on an initial listen is how good this recording is at phrasing in big arcs: the lead-up to the recap in Mvt 1, or that gigantic single-line phrase starting from (17:18).
Wild’s playing here is so energetic and hard-driven that its orbit often takes it out of the typical Rach idiom, revealing something more gaunt, steely, hard-edged. That’s why it’s such a great recording; you can feel the bones of the work. In Mvt 1’s recap the relentlessness of the piano march and the pitiless strings give the moment more terror than grandeur, and the closing’s cello line (placed unusually forward in the soundscape) is pained rather than tranquil (41:44). Rapid passages in cadenzas have a brutal precision (50:02), and big melodies enter with bruising force (55:14). There are moments of repose too, such as when Wild steps back and lets the orchestra take the lead in Mvt 2’s coda. But the overall impression is of a recording that will make you sit up if your primary sense of this work is that it’s pretty.