Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor

It is famous for being the piece against which virtuosi test their mettle—with widely varying degrees of success. Who can forget the meltdown moment in Scott Hicks’ 1996 biopic, Shine, when David Helfgott blacks out after a performance? “Rach 3” can make or break its performers. For its 1909 premiere in New York, the composer himself had to practise intensely, making use of a dummy keyboard during his transatlantic voyage to the US. Despite the work’s initially lukewarm reception in the United States, the Concerto began slowly to find a following—it would become the work that not just pianists but other composers, such as Prokofiev in his fiendish Piano Concerto No. 2 (1913), would measure up to. From the outset of the Third, Rachmaninoff gives us a brooding sense of anticipation: a simple statement of the theme from the soloist, against quietly pulsating strings, sustained wind and brass, suggests so much more is to come. And sure enough, the piano is let loose in dreamlike rhapsodic episodes before being fully unleashed in the climactic passages of the first movement's cadenza. The second movement “Intermezzo”, with its surging strings and yearning piano motifs, draws us into the reflective heart of the work—before catapulting us toward the astonishing displays of pyrotechnics in the final movement. The finale’s finely crafted references to the themes of the previous movements unify the work as it hurtles toward its climactic conclusion. Pure drama in the hands of those who can play it; tragedy for those who find they can’t.