The Isle of the Dead, Op.29

Stravinsky once described Rachmaninov as “six-feet-three of Russian gloom.” Certainly, he was a looming and rarely smiling presence on the concert platform and his personality was indeed marked by a vein of melancholy. But in his music, like Tchaikovsky before him, he could convert the gloom to expressive beauty and, more often than not, he had the resources to balance it with melting lyricism, rhythmic vitality or, in the latter part of his career, sparkling wit. The Isle of the Dead might be the gloomiest of his major works but it is also a masterfully sustained single-movement construction with a radiant middle section to offset the otherwise prevailing darkness.

Iinspired by a black-and-white reproduction of Arnold Böcklin’s painting of the same name, The Isle of the Dead might not have been written, the composer later confessed, if he had seen the original first. The image of Charon ferrying the dead across the Styx to the inhospitably craggy island-entrance to the Underworld is not quite as stark in Böcklin’s colouring as it is in black and white. Anyway, the image clearly made a deep impression on the composer, bringing to his mind the grim Dies Irae chant that he had used in his First Symphony in 1895 and which was to be a characteristic feature of his music until his last work, The Symphonic Dances, written forty-five years later.

In fact the Dies Irae theme dominates the whole of the first half of The Isle of the Dead. It is not stated literally at this stage but its influence extends everywhere, not least because a fragment of it is incorporated in the undulating motif heard in a subtly sinister quintuple time on lower strings in the opening bars: reflecting the movement of the waves or the rhythm of Charon’s oars as he rows across the water, that rocking motif recurs over and over and over again. Among further allusions to the Dies Irae in a succession of solo wind entries, there are other themes, notably a lamenting melody falling through first violins and squally flourishes blown up perhaps by gusts of wind over the Styx. However that may be, the long opening section reaches a stormy second climax before it dies away in isolated low pizzicato notes and grim echoes of the Dies Irae on brass.

The lyrical relief is introduced by first violins poised on a rhythmically supple melodic line, now in triple time and a quicker tempo, over a brighter harmonic background. According to Rachmaninov, this episode is a “supplement” to the painting, representing the beauty of life in contrast to Böcklin’s unmitigated gloom. It is only half as long as the opening section, however, and, in spite of the passion it generates, it is battered by fate and haunted by reminders of the Dies Irae theme, threateningly uttered by trombones and eerily whispered by strings and harp. The nostalgic melodic line, taken up by a lonely oboe, loses its radiant harmonies and the voyage across the Styx is resumed with the return of the rocking motif.

In the closing section, a much shorter and even sadder version of the first, dismal bassoon and plaintive oboe colours are applied to the Dies Irae theme and Charon reaches his dread destination over dark but tranquil waters.

Completed in March 1909, six months before the Third Piano Concerto, The Isle of the Dead was first performed under the composer’s direction in Moscow a year later.

Gerald Larner ©2005