Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43

Program notes

About the Work

Rachmaninoff wrote little in his years as a Russian émigré, when he earned his living chiefly as a touring pianist, and the Rhapsody is the most brilliant of the few works he did complete. He composed it at the Villa Senar, his summer home in Switzerland, and dated the score from 3 July to 18 August 1934. He gave the first performance himself in Baltimore on 7 November that year, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, and the same forces recorded it a few weeks later.

The theme is the last of Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo violin, a tune that Paganini had already varied himself and that Liszt and Brahms, among others, had used before Rachmaninoff. In spite of the title the piece is not a loose fantasy. It is a set of 24 variations, tightly organised, and in practice a piano concerto in one movement. The variations fall into three groups that correspond to the usual movements: a fast opening group in A minor, a slower and more wandering middle section that reaches its goal in the famous eighteenth variation, and a finale that returns to the home key and gathers speed to the end.

Rachmaninoff adds a second theme of his own choosing, the Dies irae, the medieval chant for the dead that appears in several of his works. It enters in the seventh variation and returns later. Writers have connected it with the old legend that Paganini owed his powers to a pact with the devil.

The eighteenth variation, the best-known passage in the work and one of the best-known melodies Rachmaninoff ever wrote, is made by a simple trick: he turns Paganini’s theme upside down, slows it and moves it into the warm key of D-flat major. He seems to have been well aware of its appeal, and is said to have remarked that this one was for his agent.

What to Listen For

The piece begins with a joke of construction. After a few bars of introduction the orchestra plays the first variation, a bare skeleton of the harmony, before anyone has heard the theme. Only then do the violins state Paganini’s tune, with the piano picking out single notes.

The early variations are quick, dry and witty, all in strict time. With Variation 7 the tempo broadens and the piano solemnly intones the Dies irae in chords, while bassoon and cellos mutter fragments of Paganini beneath it. A little later the chant returns as a grotesque march, like slow funeral bells.

Variation 11, a reflective cadenza for the piano over a mysterious accompaniment, opens the middle section. From here the music leaves A minor and travels through several keys, by way of a minuet (Variation 12) and darker, more searching pages, until the piano alone begins Variation 18. Listen to the melody rise instead of fall, then to the strings taking it over in full voice.

The last six variations return to A minor and build one long crescendo of speed and difficulty. In the final variation the brass blare out the Dies irae at full strength. The ending is a surprise: after all the thunder, the piano signs off quietly with a last scrap of Paganini’s theme.