RSNO: Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 3

Usher Hall - 28/04/23

Thomas Sondergord, conductor | Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

As I start to write this review, I catch a Radio 3 interview about this year’s Festival programme. Sara Mohr-Pietsch asks Nicola Benedetti why, when she’s included so much cutting-edge contemporary work in theatre and dance, “are the classical concerts full of big orchestras playing music by lots of dead composers – an established canon?”  Now obviously both of these women do much to promote dead as well as living composers in their working lives.  But there’s an implication behind the question which often surfaces in discussion of classical music, and which my own recent experience of Edinburgh concerts completely disproves.  It assumes that the work of dead composers is unchallenging, and is enjoyed by an elite audience, often of comfortably-off older people.  Yet Friday’s Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s concert which plays to an almost full house of people of all ages, and different musical backgrounds consists of two challenging works, the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 3  and Shostakovich’s Symphony no 10,  long, monumental in their scope and the attention that they demand from their audience.  Both are listened to with rapt enjoyment and applauded vigorously at the end.  The debate around “Where do we go from here?” will and must continue, and but it’s wrong to suggest that the work of dead composers represents a soft and unrewarding option! 

Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 3 is a big work in all senses of the word, requiring stamina as well as virtuosity from its soloist and a huge orchestra.  It’s also at 45 minutes a long concerto, and possibly its length was part of the reason for its relative unpopularity when Rachmaninov premiered it in New York in 1909, during a tour which was overall an artistic and financial success.  Later performances of the work in performance and in recordings were severely cut and only after 1960 did audiences hear the full concerto.

Leif Ove Andsnes is the inspiring soloist, and the demanding score is in secure hands.  His technical dexterity is astonishing, as is the power of his playing.  It’s often easy to see the weight in a pianist’s arms being employed in heavier passages, but it’s noticeable that Andsnes uses his whole body strength to lean into the notes.  His demeanour is calm and despite the fireworks in his playing, it’s not a showy performance.

The three movements require much from the orchestra throughout, from the rocking accompaniment to the first movement then to the barnstorming finale.  The string section under guest leader, Laura Samuel, provide that distinctive extravagant sound, while the five horns with guest principal, Diana  Leach, make characterful interventions.  There are long solo cadenzas in each movement and also shorter solo passages where the piano is accompanied after a few bars by groups of other instruments

The first movement ends quietly, and the second movement adagio begins with a slow introduction for strings.  The soloist’s response soon becomes more animated,  with  faster notes on the piano seeming to break free from the adagio constraint.  As often in the concerto, the orchestral accompaniment  is more restrained than the piano, with pizzicato strings plus bassoons and clarinets. Horns and other woodwinds reassert the slower paced theme before the piano interrupts to start the finale without a break.  The syncopated opening slides into some slower lush string and trilling woodwind, until the piano in a virtuosic mini-cadenza is accompanied by strings and quiet timpani.  This lull precedes a full orchestral conclusion with trumpets, trombones and tuba blazing while the strings soar  as the work races to an end.  Magnificent playing all round is greeted by cheers, with a number of the audience standing as Andsnes comes out for his bow.  He plays a gentle Chopin Mazurka as an encore.

Shostakovich’s ‘Symphony No 10 in E Minor’ was premiered in 1953 after Stalin’s death, although there are indications that the first two movements had been completed before he died.  After his ninth symphony was banned by Stalin in 1948, he stopped writing symphonic music.  (It’s worth noting at this point that many assertions in print about Shostakovich’s intentions or dates of composition are often disputed by other sources.)  Very probably the composer’s experiences under Stalin  are represented in this music, as is his recent affair with his student Elmira Nazirova. 

The orchestral player (apologies that I didn’t catch his name) who introduced the concert spoke of his admiration for this symphony, and its depiction of “wide open spaces” in the first movement. Sondergard turns toward the cellos and basses to start the work, and their grumbling  notes often dominate the soaring upper strings while the flute and clarinet interventions are tentative.  This uneasiness comes to a head in the fierce climax at the centre of the movement, which employs dissonant brass, and noisy percussion including a gong.  Four percussionists and the timpanist are often busily employed in this work.  Perhaps the movement represents the vastness of Russia with the persistent threat of Stalin’s terrors? It ends quietly, with high woodwind accompanied by drums, reducing to a single piccolo.

It is generally agreed that the second movement allegro depicts Stalin.  It’s nasty, brutal and short.  The fast pace and strong rhythms feature snare drums, trumpets, bassoons and tuba.  Cacophony ensues, with cymbals and timpani  playing loudly, dominating by wailing strings and shrieking piccolos.  Sondergard does not hold back from making this movement an audible assault.  A young woman near me puts her hands over her ears.

The third movement provides a break from all this noise with an gentle allegretto, at first dominated by horns whose notes provide a coded reference to the letters of his lover, Elmira’s name.  I have to confess a difficulty with note coding, as I inevitably fail to hear it in performance – Shostakovich’s coded initials also appear in this work. It’s an quietly romantic interlude in the symphony.  The final movement returns us to the “wide open spaces” of the first movement.  Sondergard again leads the cellos and basses in.  Then a rustic dance leads to another raucous climax, which may eventually signal Shostakovich’s personal victory against opposing forces.  The work has been described as “48 minutes of tragedy, despair, terror and violence and two minutes of triumph.”  The RSNO’s performance has given us all of these.  It’s a tour de force which is greeted by thunderous applause.  All credit to the RSNO and their Principal Conductor, Thomas Sondergard, who are shortly taking these works, plus Sibelius’ First Symphony and Fazil Say’s ‚Concerto for Trumpet and Organ’, on a tour to Vienna, Udine, Ljubljana and Vaduz.