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Rachmaninoff: Etudes-Tableaux

Rachmaninoff's Études-Tableaux, insofar as the overarching history of the romantic piano movement is concerned, stand at the very end of the evolution of the genre. Both opuses (33 and 39) are rife with vivid imagery, and some of the etudes here are more tableau-ish in character than they are etudes proper. Many brushstrokes inimical to Rachmaninoff's larger art are, of course, noticeable in the etudes. A signature virtuosic density and a nuanced harmonic stylization are both present here. As with other Rachmaninoff s compositions, Études-Tableaux contain several exemplars of ancient Russian music--from the sounds of the ancient cathedrals' bells to a plain monastic monody. At the same time, Études-Tableaux for the first time exhibit a few compositional nuances that would be found throughout Rachmaninoff's later works. The use of a thematic shift in several etudes is a good illustration here. For instance, Etude No. 2 (Opus 39) uses the Dies irae theme, which during the romantic movement was widely used as a theme of death (and, it should be noted, was subsequently borrowed by Rachmaninoff for other pieces as well). And yet, this theme is introduced here on the surface only, in a capacity of a faint, suggested harmonic pattern. The actual and the main theme of the etude, to be sure, is found in the upper register. For Rachmaninoff at least, it does not appear in the usual form of a pronounced, recognizable melody--instead, it is a series of separate exclamations, each beginning and fading away in a space of its own.

A lofty, ennobling sense of the tragic permeates Études-Tableaux. It is not a coincidence that, out of the 17 pieces overall, 15 are composed in a minor key. The underlying tragic character of these etudes should not be seen as an aberration, however. They were written during difficult times--difficult not only for Rachmaninoff the individual, but also difficult given the broader context of the world in which the composer lived and worked, the world that, as we know now, stood on the eve of major global calamities. But, to stop with this assessment with respect to Rachmaninoff's art would be an error--the sense of the tragic in his music is not a tragedy in the common and overused connotation of the word. Quite the opposite, it is a catharsis of the highest order that puts Rachmaninoff's art on the same plane with that of the greatest of the exponents of the European musical tradition. Viacheslav Kartsovnik, Hamburg 2009