BSO: Youthful Rachmaninov

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A taut, realistic, and brutally human melodrama, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride was a shocking and brilliant departure from the composer best known for his magical, folkloric pageantry. A story of obsessive love, dark jealousy, and fatal revenge, the master orchestrator paints a dark, oppressive, and paranoia-filled world. Saint-Saëns composed his ‘Egyptian’ concerto in the temple town of Luxor. As well as the use of Middle Eastern traits, the music also displays influences from Javanese and Spanish styles. He said that the piece represented a sea voyage – the piano and orchestra produce impressionistic sounds emulating frogs and the chirping of Nile crickets. After a promising beginning as a talented composer and performer, Rachmaninov’s confidence and momentum, if not his entire career, suddenly seemed to fizzle after premiere of his First Symphony, The performance must have been appalling. For the next three years he wrote nothing and the symphony itself was never performed again in his lifetime. Strong, highly individual and self-assured – the work of a young talent overflowing with ideas – its four movements are unified by a single idea that echoes the shape of the Dies irae, that would recur in his most important later works.