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Arts & Communication Artists recreating our world

(E minor, Op. 27), the opening is muted and suggestive, public who responds to an artist’s promptings. No matter
beginning with a small breath-like figure in the cellos and how gifted the musician or how talented the artist, the
basses. perceivers are those who concretize and bring the work
into existence.
Both are set at similar speeds, but in the first, his
intention is to elevate the consciousness of the listener Rachmaninoff learned how to communicate his art
to the solemnity of the music with the Grave tempo and effectively and elegantly. As a performer, recordings of his
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the repeated down strokes of the string instruments. The piano playing reveal a man who, according to Norris, was
second symphony is set in Largo, which is suggestive of one of the best pianists that has graced concert halls across
a less rigorous statement of intent. The slurring marks the globe. Certainly, he was the finest pianist of his era in
require the performers to group their notes in longbows, Russia. However, it was not only his advanced technique
sustaining the energy throughout but very softly. Figure 2 that singled him out; he also knew how to connect
compares the first pages of the two orchestral scores. emotionally with audiences. In 1915, he was touring Russia,
and in his first Moscow concert, during the interval, he was
The codas of both symphonies are quite different, found by his writer and poet friend, Marietta Shaginyan, in
too. In the final movement of the second symphony, a very dark mood. He exclaimed: “Didn’t you notice that
Rachmaninoff explores the “breath” motif by developing I missed the point? Don’t you understand – I let the point
it, elongating and inverting it, deploying it throughout slip!” (p. 195) The display of his advanced technique
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the orchestra texture but without overstating it. The final was not his purpose. He wanted to communicate with his
statements of the symphonies, then, reveal two quite audiences, and while he acknowledged that composers
different scenarios. Where the first symphony all but blasts craft their music with a sense of climax, Rachmaninoff
the listener with the repeated triplet figure closing with two understood that the performer also must attend to the
very loud and “forced” chords, the second symphony ends narrative arc of the music. Thus,
with the two outer lines moving in opposite directions
in contrary motion – the bass and cello lines descending “On a later occasion, he explained that each piece
he plays is shaped around its culminating point: the
while the violins and woodwind ascend; a much more whole mass of sounds must be so measured, the depth
elegant and perhaps more dramatic closure.
and power of each sound must be given with such
Rachmaninoff’s failure taught him invaluable lessons, purity and gradation that this peak point is achieved
probably the most important being that as a performer with an appearance of the greatest naturalness, though
or composer, it is all about the audience – the perceiving actually, its accomplishment is the highest art. This

Figure 2. The comparison of the opening page of Symphonies 1 and 2.

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 9 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.2126