Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini

by Chris Vaneman

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 - 1943)

Leon Fleisher, who was the most respected American piano teacher of the last part of the 20th Century, used to tell a story. Fleisher would have been around six when Rachmaninoff, who had been a wildly famous pianist for decades, made his last concert tour. Somehow Fleisher’s mother managed to get him backstage at a concert, and, between the fourth and fifth encore, pushed the frightened Fleisher forward to meet the great man. Rachmaninoff gazed down at the six-year old, and asked in his heavily accented basso profundo, “So, my young friend, you also are pianist?” Fleisher nodded timidly, and Rachmaninoff shook his head and said dolefully – but with the hint of a smile on his lips – “It is a baaaad business!” then turned and walked back onstage to receive the cheers of an adoring audience.

Not only does this brief moment seem to perfectly capture that characteristically Russian sense of humor, it’s a window into Rachmaninoff's unique career and artistic legacy. Possibly the most famous virtuoso in an era when instrumental virtuosos were celebrities nearly on par with movie stars, he was known for his impossibly difficult piano music, which of course was what he played as he toured the world and recorded. But, while the audience appeal of his lush, Romantic melodies and technical demands were undeniable, critics of his day were deaf to the emotional depth of Rachmaninoff's music. Beneath the thunderous waves of Rachmaninoff's pianism and the sentimental tug of his melodies is an undercurrent of complexity and even sadness – but beneath them, even, is another layer, one of joy and recurring playfulness.

Rachmaninoff's genius as both pianist and composer had been recognized and cultivated at the Moscow Conservatory, and by the time of the 1917 Russian Revolution he had for many years spent more time living and touring outside his native country than within it. So when he and his family fled on an open sled across the Finnish frontier one night that December, a life in exile was in a certain sense an obvious choice. Within a few years he had a villa in Switzerland to complement his main residence in New York, and he was celebrated throughout Europe and America; but his compositional output, which to that point had been considerable, slowed to a trickle.

The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, one of just six pieces Rachmaninoff completed in his 25 years in exile, dates to 1934. By form a series of 24 connected variations on a single theme, by audience experience it amounts to a single-movement piano concerto. Paganini, of course, was the 19th Century’s greatest violin virtuoso, and this theme is the one from his famous 24th Caprice for violin. But whereas Paganini’s own variations of his theme in that Caprice can fairly be called thrilling and exhilarating, Rachmaninoff pulls something much deeper out of the tune as well.

Rachmaninoff's variations are played without pause, but they can be experienced much the way we’d experience the standard three movements of a concerto: the first ten variations, which hew closely to the home key of A minor, feel like an opening fast movement; the next eight, which explore other keys and culminate in the famously yearning 18th variation (familiar from frequent use in movie and TV soundtracks), amount to a slow movement; and the remaining six to a fast conclusion. Surprisingly --  and tellingly -- the Rhapsody begins not with the theme but with Variation I, only after the variation revealing Paganini’s melody. Just like the yearning homesickness and nostalgia at its core, the melody at the piece’s heart is revealed only after that first glance.