Concerto & Symphonie

Description

Rather than describing two works that rank among the most beloved in the piano and orchestra repertoire and the symphonic repertoire, the following text will focus on the relationship between Tchaïkovski and Rachmaninov, an aspect perhaps a little less well known. Tchaïkovski and Rachmaninov belonged to two different generations. The elder was born in 1840; at his death in 1893, Rachmaninov was exactly twenty years old. With about thirty years between them, Tchaïkovski could, biologically, have been Rachmaninov’s father. Tchaïkovski, then at the height of his fame when Rachmaninov began his musical career, was in fact able to guide him almost from the very beginning. Rachmaninov had received his first piano lessons at a very young age and had begun his structured musical training at five. At ten, he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, but his results were not encouraging; he then left for Moscow, where he became a private pupil of Nikolai Zverev. It was at this teacher’s home that he met Tchaïkovski for the first time. Supported by the famous composer, Rachmaninov enrolled at the Moscow Conservatory; Tchaïkovski was in fact so impressed by the young man’s performance in the theory exams that he encouraged him to study composition alongside piano. When Rachmaninov was sixteen, Tchaïkovski is said to have declared: “I predict a great future for him.”