David Butler CANNATA
Rachmaninoff and the Symphony
edizione (Bibliotheca Musicologica-Universität Innsbruck, 4)
pagine 170
formato 16×23 • brossura
(In English)
The music of Rachmaninoff is, to this day, both praised and disdained: while its enormous popular appeal insures box-office sales, some have yet to reckon the oeuvre within the Western musical canon, and fewer still can understand why the Soviet authorities thought it subversive enough to ban. In Rachmaninoff and the Symphony, David Butler Cannata surveys Rachmaninoff as composer, and, using the symphonic music as his base of discussion, traces the genesis of several of the large symphonic structures, placing them in the continuing context of the Russian post-Wagnerian tradition.
Sergei Rachmaninoff appears to be somewhat of an enigma these days-perhaps this is the curse of the multi-talented, perhaps the burden of the perennially popular. In an age that prizes specialization, the manifold abilities which identified him as the last great pianist/composer/conductor in the grand 19th-century tradition, seem to many incongruous. On its own merits, Rachmaninoff's music-taken as the composer intended, that is, as concert pieces-guarantees premium box office sales. To this day his compositions maintain high visibility to the serious concert-going public-much to the consternation of the critics. And so, for a variety of reasons, Rachmaninoff has only slowly gained a place in the communion of composers thought worthy of serious attention. What may well have been the first musicological dissertation in English to focus on Rachmaninoff, may be that on which this present work is based (Cannata 1992). Not surprisingly, the brief awakening of interest in 1993, the 50th anniversary of Rachmaninoff's death, might have been predicted-even the memorial activities soon after Rachmaninoff died, notably the Rachmaninoff Fund and the Rachmaninoff Society, were short lived. However, certain events and publications bore witness that, whatever the current critical or academic opinion of the oeuvre, Rachmaninoff's music stubbornly refuses to go away As we listen through that distortion characteristic of early recordings, an obstacle only partially ameliorated by the wonders of modern technology, we hear Rachmaninoff play for us. For those lucky enough to have heard him in person, it quickens the memory. For those less fortunate, we sit spellbound, marvelling at such effortless artistry. For all, we are transported back in time, listening to the sensibility of a sovereign virtuoso, and transformed by the humanity of a man who had the courage to express only what he felt in his soul.