| Marketing Copy | Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) first composed his CONCERTO FOR PIANO No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1 in 1891, when he was 17 (movements 1 and 2) and 18 (movement 3 and the orchestration). As a student work, Rachmaninoff was advised to base his effort on a specific model, and the young composer chose to adapt the musical structure of his on Grieg's PIANO CONCERTO. The first movement premiered on March 17, 1892, at the Moscow Conservatory, with Rachmaninoff as soloist under the baton of Vasily Safonov. Outside of some performances by Alexander Siloti, to whom the work was dedicated, the concerto was not revisited by the composer until 1917, after the public was already familiar with his Second and Third Concertos. The revisions made were considerable and highlight the course of Rachmaninoff's development in the intervening years, where he used his accumulated knowledge of harmony, orchestration, piano technique, and form to pull a concise, spirited work from his early effort. Rachmaninoff, however, was disappointed that it never became as popular with the public as his other concerti, saying, "I have rewritten my First Concerto; it is really good now. All the youthful freshness is there, and yet it plays itself so much more easily. And nobody pays any attention. When I tell them in America that I will play the First Concerto, they do not protest, but I can see by their faces that they would prefer the Second or Third." This revised version was finalized in 1919. Instrumentation: 2.2.2.2: 4.2.3.0, Timp.Perc(2): Str (9-8-7-6-5 in set): Solo Piano. Reprint edition. Study score. |
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