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About this Piece. The teenaged Sergei Prokofiev, already a discerning pianist and critic, described Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto as “a very beautiful and famous concerto…it begins with chords, and then a broad theme do-re-do .”. The Concerto does open dramatically, with a series of rich piano solo chords tolling like bells for ...
Composed between 1900 and 1901, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 is often described as the greatest piano concerto ever written. After the disastrous premiere of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 1 in 1897, the composer fell into a deep depression and suffered severe writer's block. Luckily, the composition of his Piano Concerto No. 2 marked his full recovery, and it's a good job he took his ...
The genesis of Rachmaninoff’s “Second Concerto” can be briefly told: the fiasco of his “First Symphony,” Op. 13 (premiered March 1897), trounced the 28-year-old Rachmaninoff so much he “composed nothing for about three years.”. He noted in 1917 that, “I was like a man who had suffered a stroke, and had lost the use of his head ...
