Piano Sonata No.1 in D minor Op. 28
Sergei Rachmaninoff Lyrics


We have lyrics for these tracks by Sergei Rachmaninoff:


nocturne ор.15 no. 2 in f sharp major Luôn bên em là tôi Lâu nay không chút thay đổi Thế…


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Most interesting comments from YouTube:

Ashish Xiangyi Kumar

Rachmaninoff’s First Sonata is one of those pieces that feels like its own musical universe: it’s absolutely vast in scope, with at least 4 epic climaxes and a third movement that contains at least 9 distinct musical ideas, yet every moment of music is so thoroughly integrated with every other that it feels totally self-contained, rigorous, complete. The motif of a falling 5th, for instance, opens each movement, and a single brief idea from Mvt 1’s first real melody becomes the basis for the entire Mvt 2, and a large chunk of Mvt 3 too.

This sonata shows that Rachmaninoff was easily Beethoven’s equal when it came to sheer motivic and structural craft: it’s impossible to explain this with words, so I’d recommend just checking out the analysis above (it was a bit of a pain to put together, since this work is so motivically dense, with barely any filler). The last movement is technically in a kind of sonata form, but it swallows so much of the material from the prior movements that its cyclic function eclipses its expository function. That all the ideas in this movement can be integrated in a way which sounds completely persuasive is a kind of compositional miracle. There’s also the skill with which Rachmaninoff exploits pianistic sonorities: the heart-pounding, motoric sound of the third movement (22:05!), with its jagged Dies Irae invocations and long “floating” passages, the ecstatic warmth of the second, and the chantlike stillness, eerie drama, and contrapuntal ferocity of the first.

Lugansky:
Mvt 1 – 00:00
Mvt 2 – 13:12
Mvt 3 – 21:35

Chochieva:
Mvt 1 – 35:40
Mvt 2 – 47:41
Mvt 3 – 55:47

Lugansky is, as always, a perfect fit for Rachmaninoff. There’s not a hint of aggrieved virtuosity in his playing, which has a naturalness and expressive ease that’s very hard to attain in music this complex. He’s also really good a projecting structural detail, which is important in a work this sensitively put-together. Chochieva has that rarest of gifts in Rachmaninoff – total clarity (listen, for instance, to the opening of Mvt 3). Her Rachmaninoff is taut, almost lean, with sharp attacks and very little indulgence for long rubatos or pedal-generated hazes – which is not to say that she can’t let her sound slip off the leash for some really satisfying moments: 1:03:04, for instance. This sort of stunning playing is probably the only real remedy there is for those who find Rachmaninoff too “notey”.



SF D

Oh my gosh, Chochieva's account here is an absolute revelation. I've never been able to make sense of this piece as a listener - it always seemed so episodic and with too many moments which can be (and often are) played as climaxes.

Suddenly it all makes sense - she always has an eye on the overall structure, dashing through moments that other pianists would linger over, because she knows the climax is actually three minutes later.

There's a wonderful combination of absolute attention to detail in the score, and complete interpretive freedom, to the point that it sounds like the music is being invented in real time, just bursting into existence because it can't be resisted.

She also somehow manages to make Rachmaninoff's textures almost sheer! All those notes, and it's like she hasn't noticed the music is so difficult. We're always hearing the melody singing clearly, often weaving through a soundscape, and duetting effortlessly with countervoices and other themes.

I think she's found a new fan! I can't imagine how wonderful her Schumann is. Thanks for sharing her playing with us Ashish. Why not add some of her etude-tableaux to your playlist, or her Chopin etudes...



Mr Kitrid

I've noticed a few mistakes in your timestamps in the description, I'm just gonna point them out here:

"11:20 – Resolution into D. Note the emergence at 11:26/11:35/11:43 of M2* in LH—this will be the theme of the next movement!"
You should put a space between each timestamp and slash to make them all hyperlinked: 11:26 / 11:35 / 11:43

"22:53 – M1 in RH, a new motif (M4) in LH. At 32:02, M1, following by reference to Mvt 1 TG2 T1 in repeated notes
[TG2]"
I think you meant 23:02 instead of 32:02.

"28:01 – RECAPITULATION. Note how M4 now appears in T1"
I have no idea what happened here, but I'm pretty sure the recapitulation starts at 28:41.

Otherwise, it's all gravy. Your analyses are always a treat to read through. They're very insightful and help me
better understand and enjoy pieces as complex as this one.



Richard English

I don’t understand how this piece isn’t a cornerstone of the virtuoso repertoire. The absolute sprawling scope of the pianism in this piece is always shocking, like a punch in the face in the best of ways...

But what Rachmaninoff does with the simplest and most economic of themes is what this sonata illumines for me.

The secondary theme in the finale is just a few notes, a sort of brief upward gesture, like fragments of an old blueprint...

But the master turns it into an absolute COSMIC moment every time these little motifs appear, accompanied by the most luminous pianistic figures, contrasting with the fire and brimstone of the A-section material.

He is SUCH a craftsman. The comparison to Beethoven is SO apt.

This is Rachmaninoff’s Hammerklavier Sonata.



J K

Composed in Dresden from 1906-7, this sonata was based on Goethe's Faust. Some people claim otherwise because the lack of movement titles, but Rachmaninov himself told this to his friend Igumnov in November 1908, seven months after publication. The program was:
Mvt. 1: Faust
2. Margarete (Gretchen)
3. Mephistopheles+Faust's horse ride to Brocken

Nikita Morozov, his friend and former composition classmate, helped him with the work's form. Still, he wasn't satisfied with the length.

Rachmaninov to Morozov, May 1907:
“The Sonata is without any doubt wild and endlessly long. I think about 45 minutes. I was drawn into such dimensions by a programme or rather by some leading idea. It is three contrasting characters from a work of world literature. Of course, no programme will be given to the public, although I am beginning to think that if I were to reveal the programme, the Sonata would become much more comprehensible. No one will ever play this composition because of its difficulty and length but also, and maybe more importantly, because of its dubious musical merit. At some point I thought to re-work this Sonata into a symphony, but that proved to be impossible due to the purely pianistic nature of writing”.

He played it for his friends in Moscow and they told him to shorten it. He cut 50 bars from the first movement and 60 from the third before submitting the final version to publishers in April 1908. Unlike the Second Sonata, no known copy of the original version survives.

source: http://www.onyxclassics.com/docs/ONYX4181long%20note.pdf

This sonata reminds me of Medtner, who was one of the friends at the preview concert. Anyone else think Rachmaninov might've bounced ideas off him over letters while composing the first version?



All comments from YouTube:

Ashish Xiangyi Kumar

Rachmaninoff’s First Sonata is one of those pieces that feels like its own musical universe: it’s absolutely vast in scope, with at least 4 epic climaxes and a third movement that contains at least 9 distinct musical ideas, yet every moment of music is so thoroughly integrated with every other that it feels totally self-contained, rigorous, complete. The motif of a falling 5th, for instance, opens each movement, and a single brief idea from Mvt 1’s first real melody becomes the basis for the entire Mvt 2, and a large chunk of Mvt 3 too.

This sonata shows that Rachmaninoff was easily Beethoven’s equal when it came to sheer motivic and structural craft: it’s impossible to explain this with words, so I’d recommend just checking out the analysis above (it was a bit of a pain to put together, since this work is so motivically dense, with barely any filler). The last movement is technically in a kind of sonata form, but it swallows so much of the material from the prior movements that its cyclic function eclipses its expository function. That all the ideas in this movement can be integrated in a way which sounds completely persuasive is a kind of compositional miracle. There’s also the skill with which Rachmaninoff exploits pianistic sonorities: the heart-pounding, motoric sound of the third movement (22:05!), with its jagged Dies Irae invocations and long “floating” passages, the ecstatic warmth of the second, and the chantlike stillness, eerie drama, and contrapuntal ferocity of the first.

Lugansky:
Mvt 1 – 00:00
Mvt 2 – 13:12
Mvt 3 – 21:35

Chochieva:
Mvt 1 – 35:40
Mvt 2 – 47:41
Mvt 3 – 55:47

Lugansky is, as always, a perfect fit for Rachmaninoff. There’s not a hint of aggrieved virtuosity in his playing, which has a naturalness and expressive ease that’s very hard to attain in music this complex. He’s also really good a projecting structural detail, which is important in a work this sensitively put-together. Chochieva has that rarest of gifts in Rachmaninoff – total clarity (listen, for instance, to the opening of Mvt 3). Her Rachmaninoff is taut, almost lean, with sharp attacks and very little indulgence for long rubatos or pedal-generated hazes – which is not to say that she can’t let her sound slip off the leash for some really satisfying moments: 1:03:04, for instance. This sort of stunning playing is probably the only real remedy there is for those who find Rachmaninoff too “notey”.

Plon Plon

great work dude!

Juan Diego Suárez Servando

Ashish Xiangyi Kumar i

SF D

Oh my gosh, Chochieva's account here is an absolute revelation. I've never been able to make sense of this piece as a listener - it always seemed so episodic and with too many moments which can be (and often are) played as climaxes.

Suddenly it all makes sense - she always has an eye on the overall structure, dashing through moments that other pianists would linger over, because she knows the climax is actually three minutes later.

There's a wonderful combination of absolute attention to detail in the score, and complete interpretive freedom, to the point that it sounds like the music is being invented in real time, just bursting into existence because it can't be resisted.

She also somehow manages to make Rachmaninoff's textures almost sheer! All those notes, and it's like she hasn't noticed the music is so difficult. We're always hearing the melody singing clearly, often weaving through a soundscape, and duetting effortlessly with countervoices and other themes.

I think she's found a new fan! I can't imagine how wonderful her Schumann is. Thanks for sharing her playing with us Ashish. Why not add some of her etude-tableaux to your playlist, or her Chopin etudes...

Mr Kitrid

I've noticed a few mistakes in your timestamps in the description, I'm just gonna point them out here:

"11:20 – Resolution into D. Note the emergence at 11:26/11:35/11:43 of M2* in LH—this will be the theme of the next movement!"
You should put a space between each timestamp and slash to make them all hyperlinked: 11:26 / 11:35 / 11:43

"22:53 – M1 in RH, a new motif (M4) in LH. At 32:02, M1, following by reference to Mvt 1 TG2 T1 in repeated notes
[TG2]"
I think you meant 23:02 instead of 32:02.

"28:01 – RECAPITULATION. Note how M4 now appears in T1"
I have no idea what happened here, but I'm pretty sure the recapitulation starts at 28:41.

Otherwise, it's all gravy. Your analyses are always a treat to read through. They're very insightful and help me
better understand and enjoy pieces as complex as this one.

Ashish Xiangyi Kumar

Thanks for this! Typos have been corrected.

13 More Replies...

Richard English

I don’t understand how this piece isn’t a cornerstone of the virtuoso repertoire. The absolute sprawling scope of the pianism in this piece is always shocking, like a punch in the face in the best of ways...

But what Rachmaninoff does with the simplest and most economic of themes is what this sonata illumines for me.

The secondary theme in the finale is just a few notes, a sort of brief upward gesture, like fragments of an old blueprint...

But the master turns it into an absolute COSMIC moment every time these little motifs appear, accompanied by the most luminous pianistic figures, contrasting with the fire and brimstone of the A-section material.

He is SUCH a craftsman. The comparison to Beethoven is SO apt.

This is Rachmaninoff’s Hammerklavier Sonata.

Richard Chen

not too far off from hammerklavier in length either - 35 minutes is already longer than the Liszt Bm and trending towards the upper extreme of the piano sonatas in the standard repertoire

Dan G

Rachmaninoff definitely was a master of motivic transformation since such a young age when he wrote his neglected but epic First Symphony with just one theme (the Dies Irae) and one brief motive as a basis for almost the entire work, reaching a grandious form of tragic and heroic expression.

Alison Smith

But it's in all his music...you can hear it

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