"Cinq Concerts Historiques Russes, 1907...Quatrième Concert" - Concert Program including a performance by the composer of the Piano Concerto No. 2

Paris: G. de Malherbe, Imprimeur. 1907. Rare original program from the historic 1907 performance series at the Théâtre de l'Opéra in Paris, "Cinq Concerts Historiques Russes," this being the fourth program, from Sunday, May 26, and including From the Middle Ages, Op. 79 by Alexander Glazunov, Thamar by Mily Balakirev, the fifth act of Modest Moussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina and Le Printemps and the Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 by Sergei Rachmaninoff, the former conducted by and the latter with the solo piano performed by the composer himself.  Camille Chevillard conducted the other works, joined also by singers Zbroueff, Smirnow and Chaliapin.  2 pp. 8.5 x 10.75 inches (22 x 27.5 cm.). Overall toning, with a block of darker toning to right verso upper corner, else fine. 

During the 1906 exhibition of Russian Art in Paris, impresario Sergei Diaghilev was acquainted with the Parisian music publisher Gabriel Astruc, who encouraged him to organize a series of concerts with music by Russian composers. On May 16th, 1907 the first concert with works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka and Tchaikovsky launched the series of 5 concerts.  The present program, the fourth of the series, is particularly notable for the performance by the composer himself of what has become one of the most widely performed and adored works in the piano concerto literature. "It is hard to believe that music as confidently athletic and effusively lyrical as Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto could be the product of low self-esteem and writer’s block.  But following the excoriation his Symphony No. 1 received after its 1897 premiere (in a terrible performance led by a reportedly drunk Alexander Glazunov), Rachmaninoff became increasingly depressed about composing.  After many fruitless attempts to pull himself out of this deepening despondency, Rachmaninoff began daily sessions with a Dr. Nikolai Dahl in January of 1900.  Dahl was an internist and hypnotist – and not at all incidentally a fine amateur musician – who had treated one of Rachmaninoff’s aunts.  Dahl’s therapy, a combination of sensitive, understanding discussion and hypnotic suggestion, proved successful again."

That April, Rachmaninoff went on holiday to the Mediterranean, returning to Russia with "a portfolio of newly composed music, including sketches for his Second Piano Concerto.  He finished the second and third movements of the Concerto in time to play them on a benefit concert in December; the full work – dedicated to Dahl – was completed the following summer and premiered in November 1901.  The Concerto was ecstatically received at that premiere, and has been a staple of heroic pianists ever since. Like many of the composer’s other popular scores, it has been pillaged for both style and content by film composers and songwriters.

"Besides its big tunes, other aspects of this concerto include imaginative treatments of the piano-orchestra relationship in texture and color as well as the highly evolved, thematic give-and-take.  The great outpourings of melody are balanced by brutal dances and a sardonic subtext.  In this fabulous showpiece, the musicianship always motivates virtuosity — an interpretive virtuosity as much as a mechanical virtuosity, one that intensifies musical developments rather than replacing them." (John Henken, LA Phil)

(21739)

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Program, unsigned

Classical Music

$300.00

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