Symphony No. 3
A leaner, sharper late symphony that trades youthful excess for economy while keeping the old melancholy. It sounds both Russian and exiled, looking backward with clear eyes.
By the time Rachmaninoff wrote his Third Symphony in 1935 and 1936, he was living in the West, composing at Villa Senar, his home above Lake Lucerne. He worked at it across two summers, interrupted by ill health and touring, and finished it in June 1936. The music reflects the man he had become. It is more concentrated than the Second, cast in three movements rather than four, with a recurring motto theme binding the whole together and the Dies irae once again threaded through the texture.
The structure is unusual in its economy. The central movement does double duty, serving as both slow movement and scherzo, so the symphony feels tighter and more argued than the expansive works of his youth. The orchestration is transparent and precise, the writing spare where the earlier symphonies were lavish.
The Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski gave the premiere in 1936. Critics and audiences, expecting the lush romanticism of the past, were unsure what to make of the leaner idiom, and the reception was cool. Rachmaninoff stayed convinced of its worth, and later opinion has proved him right.
Movements
Recordings coming soon
The individual movements will be uploaded here.