Brilliant playing by surely one of the finest orchestras in European, let alone German, music making. Exquisite woodwind. One can tell these players have the nerve to be live on radio and on RU-vid, to audiences of potentially millions. Extraordinary attack and unison from all the string sections. Whenever the strings break out into that oh so Rachmaninovian (!) richly divided sumptuous ocean of swaying harmonics, it toys with ones heart like a plaything of Athena and Aphrodite and Terpsichore! Everything in this performance is perfection of playing, yet astonishingly "St Petersburg and Muscovite" in empathy for the score, and Russian musical traditions. Maestro Cristian Măcelaru is completely sympatico with the players. Moreover, this is the orchestral work where Rachmaninov gets everything right, to the point of a distinctly Russian and soulful genius. Lyrical and melodic outpouring of supreme emotional energy and expressiveness and yet also tightness; perfectly judged and delicious late-romantic early-modern orchestration (hardly Berg or Schoenberg, but post Firebird, and definitely Korngold); and expert development and overall construction. Rather like Brahms' "romantic wine in classical bottles", but shifted 30 years into the 20th Century, and with rather more metrical daring and rhythmical prowess, and quite a few touches of dissonance, for extra lashings of melancholia. "Highlight music" from the core of the Russian psyche and the Slavic peoples. Like Rimsky, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and that sometimes rather too Parisian Stravinsky. Utterly non Austro-Germanic world and spiritual outlook. No mocking Rhine-maidens and forest murmurs here! Music of great depths of mature feeling, and fit to be to loved and admired all ones lifetime. Regards, andrea
that is a brilliant essay ,my friend! I know this work for over 50 years in god knows how many performances. This one belongs to the most engaging and heartfelt performances I ever heard!!!! The conductor made this orchestra shine in all its excellence. I am deeply moved.
Dear PL, I'm glad you liked my comments. Thanks for the kindly compliment. Our little London sisterhood of music fanatics, all our hearts dance to large scale orchestral and operatic compositions. Except to brain-dead, heart-frozen and etiolated formalists, those baren offspring of sterile Webern and professorial computerised IRCAM, one of the charms of symphonic composition is that one has the full resources - in melodies and harmonies and rhythm and general instrument colour, and the contrasting sections of the orchestra - to expound, analyses, and set out in sightly more disentangled from, or one might say "in arpeggiosity", those many many timbres and complexities of experience and feeling and reflection and yearning and delight and puzzlement. Complexities and overtones that are normally held out of complete conscious inspection, unless one is a rank genius such as Dante, Shakespeare, Edith Wharton, Hitchcock, Jung, or Sylvia Plath. Then, as can readily be anticipated and grasped, we may proceed further, and that dextrous "musico-psychoanalytical exhibition" can be resumed and recombined, perhaps in pleasing counterpoint and polyphony, or in shattering and heart-rending dissonance, and in unto fore unknown novelty, both beauteous or fascinating, or frightening or repulsive. Often with those reactive sentiments chiming together, in ways standardly barricaded away from our humdrum ego perspective, with insights too intense for rational grasping. That is why all art aspires to the level of music. And indeed, so do all our better efforts to understand fully who we are, where we are, from where we have emerged, what is our world, and what is everyone to each other, and whence lies our destiny? One reason for that is that whilst, of course, the dimension of time is fundamental to our apprehension of pitch and rhythm and stress. and in the root analysis of constructive or destructive wave-front interference, nonetheless our perceptive upon the dynamical domain of "musical ontology" (which is in fact the domain of objective reality made richer under the lights of dynamical musical art and performance - for we are performing the inherently mobile and dynamical aspects of objective reality) .... this perspective is not apparently the paradoxical dimensionless "ever traveling point of infinitely narrow now", so teasing to philosophers, psychologist and mathematicians (at least to the more defensive ego-entrapped masculine candidates for Nobel prizes). Rather, we appear to have a "hugely spread" simultaneous grasp of harmonic analysis, as if our auditory psyche was laid out, and "in extenso", upon a vast undulating clothe of gorgeous golden sensuous apprehension, looking simultaneously, in many dimensions and on may point of those dimensions, at huge shimmering dancing structures of music. www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/in-extenso Dances into which we, all the audience, the soul of the composer, the gifted players, the inspired conductor, and the large history of performances of the work, and great political, ethical and philosophical debates, are all swept, like participants in the Tarantella. This absence of barriers between music, the self, and other listeners and dancers, is another touchstone of high musical art. One that is highly indicative of music's fundamental role and co-existence with our womanity, from our earliest psychical evolution. Long before we had solid individual ego-perspectives, and long before spoken let alone written languages. Music is indeed interlocked with all the dynamical world, as Mahler righty intuited, even more than vision, and much more than speech. When that ravishing cello melody is first played in the exposition, at 2:10 , with rapt and so perfectly judged woodwind chords and counter melodies, it is like something consummately tender, gossamer gentle, yet insistent, exquisite, and meltingly redolent of deepest romantic mutual adoration between another person and oneself, or perhaps 3,4,5 or more mutually adoring and tender lovers. Her admiration and astonished rapturous entrancement, for all she has been, and known, and expresses, and all that she dreams of the larger world of ideals and politics and progress, and her yearning for the world to be aflame with transcendence, from the canyons to the stars, to quote Messiaen. Like ones fascination and beguilement, and love and sustained meandering dialogue, with a perfectly judged portrait by Modigliani, or a sculpture by Brancusi. As if the art-work had become a veritable Galatea, to ones kindly conversational entreaties on behalf of Pygmalion. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatea_(mythology) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(mythology) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(mythology)#Parallels_in_Greek_myth As if one had stepped out into the sunlight, on a spring morning of optimism, to walk in Central Park, amidst that cavalcade of curiosities, energy and eccentricities of NY. With ones heart still aight from an evening and night of talk, and embraces, and deepest looks, and kisses and much more. Now all that was calmly familiar is rendered scintillating with new meanings and fresh recollections. As has ben said by the programme writer, it is plain that Rachmaninov constructed a portrait of his beloved Russian, of St Petersburg and Moscow, with such absolute untrammelled idealisation and adoration, so that the could pour out the frankest depths of his yearning and lovelorn aching for the nutritious soil of his beloved Slavic motherland. Our irresistible and titanic powers of enmeshment, over love-affair with our adored and blessed terroir, are clearly designed, architected and constantly evolving at the most foundational and engraved subconscious depths of our evolved psyches. We are territorial female Gaia-worshipping hominids from top to bottom. This is not a doctrine to give succour to paranoid defensive militaristic men (a vile species of warmongering psychopaths whom I deplore and despise), but rather that our fluent and quicksilver flowing psyches are driven to reach and caress and explore, via our souls fingers and roots, far out and deeply into Nature's Realm. A woman (or man) who knows not where her soul was born and forged with love, and with rapture and astonishment, and tears, and fearfulness at the sublimity of thunder and lightning, and at the finest details of growing and maturing leaves, and tangling tumbling climbing vines, she is forever lost and adrift at sea, like the condemned Flying Dutchwoman of Wagner's opera. Could anything be less Russian, one quips, than calmed Lake Lucerne, that officious Swiss realm of cryptic bankers and duplicitous diplomats? Love andrea
It's hard to understand why this work isn't performed and recorded more often. The Second Symphony is an established classic. But, it shouldn't be the only Rachmaninoff symphony on the menu - not when something as wonderful as this symphony exists. Best wishes from Vermont 🍁
@@jonathanteller6550 That's a sad attitude, but you are probably right, it is the attitude of many. The first two movements of this symphony in particular are very good indeed, a work that deserves much greater appreciation nd much more attention. Maybe this is still happening now (as one of the few remaining good things within these evil times)?
@@germanchris4440I’d say the second movement is the best of the 3. That rising climax in the middle of the movement is amazing, and that beautiful, longing solo violin at the end puts a beautiful touch. And as always, the bass is prominent and resoundingly strong. An incredible piece
I haven't heard the second movement's theme at 14:39 phrased that way before. In each arpeggio, the first note seems very detached from the next three. Good twist, I like it!
I think it is a really good,exciting, rousing and lively performance! The orchestra plays fantastic! But WDR Klassik you really should fix the gaffe with the missing bars at the beginning of the first movement!!
