Piano Concerto No.4

In the 1920s, when the new aesthetics of Bartók, Stravinsky, Berg, Schoenberg and other composers were taking hold, SERGEI RACHMANINOFF completed the score of his Piano Concerto No. 4. The year was 1926, and the Concerto, after its premiere in Philadelphia, was defined by a critic of the Herald Tribune as an echo of the nineteenth century. These facts, of course, made Rachmaninoff reflect on his style: I cannot reject the old way of writing,' he said, 'and I cannot master the new. The new kinds of music seem to come not from the heart but from the head. Composers think rather than feel. Years later, taking stock again, he would confirm the sincerity of his artistic choices: Before you head out into the new world, if you make an effort to get to know the old world more closely, you can easily come to the conclusion: there are still many possibilities left in the old world... The old language possesses an inexhaustible richness. The premiere of the Fourth Concerto in Philadelphia passed without enthusiasm and with critical acclaim. Rachmaninoff revised the Concerto twice: once in the late 1920s and again after 1941. He included the new version of the work in his 1929-1930 tour, but even then it was met with reluctance. The concerto was commissioned by Nikolai Medtner, a fellow composer and pianist to whom the concerto is dedicated. In a letter to him, Rachmaninoff shared that he was concerned about the length of the Concerto, jokingly comparing it to Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. He shortened over 100 bars, rewrote the opening 12 pages. But despite his efforts, the Fourth Concerto remains far from the popularity of the previous two. To everyone's surprise, Rachmaninoff, who had a reputation as a remarkable composer and pianist, lost the motivation to compose after he left Russia in 1917 and settled in the United States in 1921. He was forced to give more concerts, and in the last 20 years of his life he composed only a few opuses - apart from the Concerto No. 4, these were the Symphony No. 3, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Symphonic Dances.