Terez Rose
Many classical music purists today consider Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music to be excessively sentimental, admittedly lush but too similar-sounding once you’ve heard one concerto. But is this a fair assessment?
Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op 18 is the kind of music that grips you by the collar and draws you into its world instantly, with its rich orchestral textures and dramatic fervor. I’ve loved it for years. Decades.
Thoughts vary about Rachmaninoff’s Late Romantic music, produced during an era that had begun testing its boundaries (think Gustav Mahler) or breaking them entirely (think Arnold Schoenberg and his atonality, his twelve-tone technique). Rachmaninoff wanted nothing to do with that. He saw himself as “the last of the Romantics” who reflected the philosophy of Old Russia “with its overtones of suffering and unrest, its pastoral but tragic beauty, its ancient and enduring glory.” Many classical music purists today consider Rachmaninoff’s music to be excessively sentimental, admittedly lush but too similar-sounding once you’ve heard one concerto. The tremendous popularity of his Piano Concerto No. 2, in fact, seems to argue their case that it’s, perhaps, a bit lowbrow for classical tastes.
Is Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 lowbrow? Certainly, it’s extremely accessible to non-classical music lovers. It’s appeared in pop culture through movies, plays, and songs throughout the twentieth century. I myself was only nineteen when I fell wildly in love with it. The music so aptly described all those larger-than-life feelings and emotions exploding within me. I ate it up, right alongside Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Dvorák’s New World Symphony. In an era of LP and cassette tape music, those were three of the dozen cassette recordings I listened to incessantly. The latter two, I can’t bear to listen to anymore; they are now definitely “pop classical” to me, which nonetheless constantly fills the concert halls. » Read More
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2025/03/sergei-rachmaninoff-music-too-schmaltzy-terez-rose.html
