We can never unhear the soundscape of our times (for a roundup of posts on reception history, click here).

As I continue to delight in Hélène Grimaud, Rachmaninoff’s 2nd piano concerto (1901) comes with a lot of accumulated baggage, which may both blur and enrich our appreciation. The most obvious instance is the soundtrack of Brief encounter (David Lean, 1945). Even for me, growing up in the swinging 60s, this is an inescapable association—let alone for my parents’ generation (cf. A short story), for whom the story of the wife’s reluctant retreat from a life-enhancing affair back to a stultifying marriage would have been still more telling, and modern, than for more recent audiences in similar situations. The Guardian, awarding it top place in a survey of twenty movies about doomed love, gave a splendid summary:

[They] end up rejecting continental-style hanky-panky in favour of boring but honourable married fidelity, all of this set in the long-gone days when the middle-classes spoke with clipped RP accents and the trains ran on time.

Readily parodied, the film must have meant a lot when it was released—in 1945, of all times. The play by Nöel Coward dates from 1936; it was at his insistence that the concerto was later used for the film—and then we might try and think ourselves back to 1901 when Rachmaninoff completed it, when he was just recovering from a breakdown and depression. He gave the American premiere of the concerto in 1909, accompanied by a programme note [really?] by Philip Hale cited in the wiki article:

The concerto is of uneven worth. The first movement is labored and has little marked character. It might have been written by any German, technically well-trained, who was acquainted with the music of Tchaikovsky.

Nicolas Slonimsky’s Lexicon of musical invective has a similarly dismissive review from 1919:

… a little too much like a mournful banqueting on jam and honey… In all the music of Rachmaninoff there is something strangely twice-told. From it there flows the sadness distilled by all things that are a little useless… He is still content with music that toys with the pianoforte… He writes pieces full of the old astounding musical dislocation [WTF? SJ]. There was a day, perhaps, when such music served. But another day has succeeded to it. And so, Rachmaninoff comes among us like a very charming and amiable ghost.

He recorded the concerto in 1924 with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and again with the same team in 1929—a recording that opens this valuable YouTube collection of the four concertos and Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, with useful captions at the beginning that you might like to read separately:

However definitive (and despite his beguiling rubato), Rachmaninoff’s own interpretation may strike the modern ear as rushed and understated—as with baroque music, it’s always worth paying attention to changing performance practice (see e.g. here, and here). The soundtrack for Brief Encounter was recorded by Eileen Joyce with (I think) Erich Leinsdorf and the LPO.

Whether or not we can (or wish to) put all this baggage aside, it’s a magical concerto—I adore this exquisite performance by Hélène Grimaud and Claudio Abbado—rendered in black-and-white, enhancing its period feel:

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And while I’m on Rachmaninoff, I can’t believe I never got to play the 2nd symphony, also overwhelming… Of all the versions, André Previn’s recording with the LSO is much praised (for his name in Chinese, see here):

The great Rozhdestvensky with the LSO in 1988 (Andrew Marriner with the clarinet solo in the slow movement!):

(cf. their live performance in 1984, with cuts).

But I’m most attached to this live performance in the Concertgebouw, with Eivind Gullberg Jensen conducting from memory:

This seems to be an exception to my rule that our experience of all kinds of music is enriched by early associations. Not only have I never played it, I only got to know it properly over the last few years.

More Rachmaninoff here, here, and here.