Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13

Program notes

About the Work

Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony has one of the most dramatic and painful backstories in all music: the work whose catastrophic premiere nearly destroyed its young composer. Rachmaninoff wrote it in 1895, aged just twenty-two, brimming with ambition and confidence; he produced a bold, dark, fiercely original symphony, prefacing the score with the biblical epigraph ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ But its 1897 St Petersburg premiere was a disaster. The conductor, Alexander Glazunov, by several accounts under-rehearsed and possibly drunk, gave a shambolic performance, butchering the score. Rachmaninoff, listening in torment, fled the hall before the end. The reviews were savage (César Cui notoriously compared it to a depiction of the plagues of Egypt), and the failure plunged Rachmaninoff into a depression so severe that he composed almost nothing for three years, recovering only with the help of hypnotherapy, after which he wrote the beloved Second Piano Concerto.

Rachmaninoff withdrew the symphony and never let it be played again in his lifetime; he believed the score lost. But after his death the surviving orchestral parts were used to reconstruct the score, and the symphony was triumphantly revived in Moscow in 1945. Posterity’s verdict has completely reversed that of 1897. Far from a failure, it is now recognised as a powerful, darkly Romantic and strikingly original work: taut, intense, saturated with the brooding Russian melancholy and the chant-like melodies (including, characteristically, echoes of the Dies irae) that would mark all his music. It makes a thrilling, weighty conclusion to the programme.

What to Listen For

Listen from the very first bars for the symphony’s germinal idea: a terse, brooding motto, a short figure with the contour of chant and a kinship with the Dies irae, that pervades all four movements, binding the whole work together with a dark, obsessive intensity. The first movement grows from it into music of stormy power and surging Romantic sweep.

The second movement is a fleet, shadowy scherzo: listen for its nervous, scurrying energy and the way the motto theme keeps stealing back. The slow movement (Larghetto) offers respite: listen for the tender melodies and the warmer, more lyrical mood, though shadows are never far away. The finale bursts in with a blazing fanfare and a festive, march-like energy; listen for the brilliant orchestration, the recurrence of the motto theme, and the way the music drives through tumultuous climaxes to a dark, fateful close. Throughout, listen for how much of the mature Rachmaninoff is already here: the sweeping melodies, the chant-derived themes, the obsession with the Dies irae, and the deep vein of Russian melancholy, all in a bold symphonic work whose unjust early failure cost music dear.