Simply symphonic

Next record up of the Odyssey of Reviews is Rachmaninov's Second Symphony.

It's a corker: massive, powerful and thrilling in places, subtle and gentle in others. Rachmaninov was, amongst other things, massive. Some of his piano music is incredibly difficult to play simply because his hands could reach parts of the keyboards other hands couldn't reach. I have a few of my grandfather's 78rpm records, amongst them some discs of Rachmaninov playing his own music. Even under the hiss and crackle of 90 year old shellac and the different styles of another time, the difference is hugely noticeable.

So anyway, the Second Symphony. Sweeping strings, menacing bass and brass. Big tunes, perhaps the last of the Romantic symphonies composed before the Russian Revolution, World War One and mass slaughter put an end to coherent, 'pretty' music in serious classical circles. For an hour in some versions. The best bit, to my ears, is the dark and gloomy opening of the second movement, which draws on monastic requiem chants.



It saved Rachmaninov's career and maybe his sanity - the critical reaction to his first symphony was so harsh that it sent him into a deep depression.