Referat Rachmaninoff
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Sergei Vassilievitch Rachmaninoff
was born on April 2, 1873 at Oneg, Novgorod, Russia.
He died in Beverly Hills, California,
March 28, 1943.
Rachmaninoff s Legacy
All during his life, and for many decades after his passing, Sergei
Rachmaninoff was regarded as an anomaly, a throwback to the 19th
century, as his music always expressed itself through an unabashedly
Romantic language: At times haunting and foreboding (prevestitoare); at
others, gentle, passionate and con molte dolce. But always, all these
conflicting feelings are expressing his greatest works - such as the
Symphony No. 2, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Symphonic
Dances. If listening to Rachmaninoff seemed to some a futile exercise in
depression and an exploration of the depths of sorrow, this was because
of the complexity of the composer himself. But that was only half of the
story; for the listener will have found himself transported from the
inevitability of death, to rise above the despair and exalt in the
life-affirming, powerful finales for which the composer was so
well-known.
To hear Rachmaninoff s music is to understand the soul of the composer
himself. While composing, he literally poured himself into his
compositions. After his Symphony No. 1 had a disastrous premiere in
Moscow in 1897, Rachmaninoff was so severely depressed, that he sought
treatment from hypnotist Dr. Nikolai Dahl. Dr. Dahl repeated to the
forlorn(deznadajduit) composer, "you will began to write your
concerto....you will work with great facility....the concerto will be of
an excellent quality...." The results of these sessions with Dr. Dahl
was the emergence of the composer from the throes of depression, and
also, perhaps, his most straightforward and beautiful work, the Second
Piano Concerto in C-Minor, Op. 18. And yet, the second movement, Adagio
sostenuto - although a tender, impassioned liebeslied - eloquently
exhibits the composer s sense of wistfulness(visator) and melancholy he
was never fully able to overcome. Listen to any of Rachmaninoff s great
works: At once they are transcendent and yet so personally private.
Rachmaninoff s style of composition grew out of the Romantic period of
the late-19th century, in the tradition begun by Mendelssohn, Schumann
and Liszt, as carried on by Brahms, Dvorak and Rachmaninoff s own
teacher and mentor, Tchaikovsky. Like Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff wrote
music that was thoroughly Russian, and thoroughly infused with so many
of the emotional conflicts and yearnings ingrained in both composers.
The Great War and the Bolshevik Revolution had left Europe ravaged, and
during this period, Rachmaninoff was one of the many musicians who
became an expatriate of his own land, never to return to the Russia he
had so loved. But something else had happened in the previous decade:
New musical idioms had come to the fore. Some composers, such as
Sibelius, Vaughan Williams and Elgar, had transformed the language of
Romantic music into the distinctly twentieth-century "neo-romantic"
sound, which combined traditional musical modes of expression with
experimentation in orchestration and theme. In France, taking the lead
of earlier Romantics as Saint-Saens, Impressionists such as Debussy and
Ravel "painted pictures in sound." The previous decade had also seen the
increasing popularity of such "modernistic" composers as Stravinsky,
Schoenberg and Bartok, who employed a new radicalism in sound, exploring
the limits of atonality and polytonality. Most representative of this
new way of composing was Stravinsky s Le Sacre du Printemps, which -
upon its Paris premiere in 1913 - started a riot(revolta) right in the
concert hall. Yet, against the changing tide, Rachmaninoff stood
immobile. Not as a matter of principle, but because he knew his own
direction and simply followed it. Certainly, no-one could say there was
no "growth" or maturity between Rachmaninoff s First Piano Concerto
(1891) and his Fourth (1924), but the progress in Rachmaninoff s musical
expression was measured. Nevertheless, Rachmaninoff lived to see his
music routinely sneered(luata in batjocura) by the representatives of
musical "taste," the critics. He was smeared(bârfit) as a 19th century
wild soul, who composed insignificant "virtuoso" pieces that were just
fine for showing off a pianist s technical skill, but were thematically
"mechanistic," and steeped in "shallow"(superficial), "overemotional"
bathos(batos=trecere brusca de la elevat la porzaic). In fact, in 1954,
the so-called "authoritative" Grove s Dictionary of Music referred to
Rachmaninoff s compositions as "severely limited...monotonous in
texture" and "artificial and gushing(exuberant)." Amidst the all the
smug critique was found this most omniscient prognostication: "the
enourmous popular success some of Rakhmaninov s works had in his
lifetime is not likely to last, and musicians never regarded it [sic]
with much favour." Indeed, it is quite ironic that Rachmaninoff - a
Russian noble who admired the Czar and chose exile, rather than to live
under the Soviets - so hated and ignored by the critics, was a perennial
favourite of the public. Rachmaninoff s concerts always sold out, and
his pieces always brought performers and orchestras large audiences when
programmed.
And we are fortunate, indeed, that we can still hear the legacy
Rachmaninoff left, for he recorded extensively his own works, and those
of other composers such as Chopin, Beethoven and Liszt. Sergei
Rachmaninoff died in 1943 in Beverly Hills, California. During his own
lifetime, he was widely respected and feted as one of the greatest
conductors and concert pianists of all time. Yet, his secret dream - to
be remembered for his compositions - seemed fleeting and futile. But, as
is the cases with many geniuses, in the decades after his death,
Rachmaninoff s reputation grew as an innovative composer, principally
through the efforts of his admirers, such as Eugene Ormandy, Leopold
Stokowski, Vladimir Horowitz, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Artur Rubinstein,
Ruth Laredo, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Martha Argerich, Jean-Yves Thibaudet,
Mariss Jansons and Andre Previn, among countless others. Year after
year, his recordings carried to those who would just listen with their
own ears the fact that here was not a hopelessly obsolete second-rate
throwback to the 19th century, but indeed a man ahead of his time, who
communicated his deepest-held emotions honestly, beautifully and
forcefully, rather than sell out his soul to "keep up with the times."
If you have never listened to Rachmaninoff, then you are in for a feast
for the ears and the soul, when you do. I actually envy those who hear
the passion and genius of Sergei Vassilievitch Rachmaninoff for the
first time.
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