Wednesday December 30, 2009


Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Jeffrey Kahane, conductor; Olga Kern, piano
CSO Chorus/ Duain Wolfe, director
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Three Russian Songs, Op.41
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor, Opus 1 (10/16/09)
Also, Aaron Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man
Denver Brass/ Kenneth Singleton
"Epics in Brass" DB 8837 Track 1 3:30
Charley talks with Denver Brass executive director Kathy Brantigan about their New Year's Eve show at the Newman Center.
Gustav Holst (trans. Kenneth Singleton): "Mars" from The Planets, Op.32
Denver Brass/ Kenneth Singleton
"Epics in Brass" DB 8837 Track 3 7:36


Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Piano Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor, Opus 1
I. Vivace
II. Andante
III. Allegro vivace

Rachmaninoff finished his First Piano Concerto on July 18, 1891, while still a student at the Moscow Conservatory. ``I could have finished it much earlier,'' he said, ``but after the first movement...I was idle for a long time and only began to write out the other movements on July 3. I wrote down and orchestrated the last two movements in two-and-a-half days. You can imagine what a job that was! I wrote from 5 o'clock in the morning until 8 o'clock in the evening.''
The first movement was played on a student concert on March 29, 1892. ``There was not yet of course any individuality,'' complained one reviewer, ``but there was taste, tension, youthful sincerity and obvious knowledge; already there is much promise.''
Rachmaninoff agreed. ``It's so terrible in its present form,'' he admitted. ``It will have to be written all over again, for its orchestration is worse than its music.''
In 1917 he revised the work. ``It is really good now,'' he beamed. ``All the youthful freshness is there, and yet it plays itself so much more easily. And nobody pays any attention. When I tell them in America that I will play the First Concerto, they do not protest, but I can see by their faces that they would prefer the Second or Third.'' Rachmaninoff introduced this revised version on January 28, 1919 in New York.
For a performance in 1938, Lawrence Gilman wrote: ``The Concerto begins with the material of the first theme: a reiterated F sharp, fortissimo, for clarinets, bassoons and horns and an impetuous descending passage in octaves for the piano. A brief cadenza for the solo instrument introduces a contrasting subject, a songlike theme for the first and second violins....In the Andante a phrase for the horn, answered by strings, woodwinds, and trombones, and a short cadenza for the piano, introduce a meditative song for the solo instrument....A solo bassoon, with an air of somewhat bashful uneasiness, intrudes upon the piano's cloistral contemplation; but it withdraws...with its finger on its lips....The strings are bolder, but even they dare enter only on tiptoe...Later, a solo horn and woodwinds add their voices, and the orchestra regains its rights. The Finale is capricious in mood, restless and complex in its rhythmical transformations. A contrasting middle section proffers a sentimental interlude, wherein the strings, adorned by the piano, soon give place to the solo instrument, which, left to itself, becomes for a time the mouthpiece of the poet's lyric fervor. The resumption of the first tempo leads to a tumultuous close.''
The Concerto is scored for solo piano, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani and strings.