Symphony 2 rachmaninov biography
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PLAYBILL
PROGRAM NOTES
by Jeff Counts
SAINT-SAËNS: Danse macabre
THE COMPOSER – CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921) – Saint-Saëns left France briefly in March of 1871 to escape the violence of the Paris Commune but returned home just two months later to find the city full of nationalist zeal. While engaging deeply with the Parisian arts intelligentsia over the next couple of years, Saint-Saëns did something many who knew him considered unthinkable – he got married. It was not a happy union and both children born to Marie Truffot died young (one fell from a window, and the other contracted pneumonia). But as is so often the case in music history, great work comes from great pain. Saint-Saëns produced two of his most enduring scores during the courtship and short matrimony with Marie, the opera Samson et Delila and the orchestral tone poem Danse macabre.
THE HISTORY – Saint-Saens was quite taken with the symphonic poems of Franz Liszt and explored the fo
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Sergei Rachmaninoff
Russian composer, pianist and conductor (1873–1943)
"Rachmaninoff" redirects here. For other uses, see Rachmaninoff (disambiguation).
Sergei Rachmaninoff | |
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Rachmaninoff in 1921 | |
| Born | 1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1873 Semyonovo, Staraya Russa, Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Died | 28 March 1943(1943-03-28) (aged 69) Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
| Works | List of compositions |
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff[a][b] (1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1873 – 28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuosopianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness, de
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Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Opus 27 (1907) 60 minutes
Piccolo, 3 flutes, 3 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drums, cymbals, snare drum, glockenspiel, and strings.
Following the disastrous March 27, 1897 St. Petersburg world premiere of his First Symphony, Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff plunged into a profound depression. The crisis that threatened to destroy Rachmaninoff’s musical career lasted for three years. A breakthrough for Rachmaninoff finally occurred in 1900. On the advice of relatives, Rachmaninoff consulted Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a psychiatrist who used hypnosis in the treatment of his patients. The consultations with Dr. Dahl were an extraordinary success. Rachmaninoff experienced a tremendous resurgence of confidence and immediately began to compose his Second Piano Concerto (1901), a work he dedicated to Dr. Dahl.
Rachmaninoff eve