The twenty-four Preludes

from 5 Morceaux de Fantaisie, Op.3 (1892)

Prelude in C sharp minor: Lento

Ten Preludes Op.23 (1901-1903)

No.1 in F sharp minor: Largo

No.2 in B flat major: Maestoso

No.3 in D minor: Tempo di minuetto

No.4 in D major: Andante cantabile

No.5 in G minor: Alla marcia

No.6 in E flat major: Andante

No.8 in A flat major: Allegro vivace

No.9 in E flat minor: Presto

No.10 in G flat major: Largo

No.7 in C minor: Allegro

Thirteen Preludes Op.32 (1910)

No.1 in C major: Allegro vivace

No.2 in B flat minor: Allegretto

No.3 in E major: Allegro vivace

No.4 in E minor: Allegro con brio

No.5 in G major: Moderato

No.6 in F minor: Allegro appassionato

No.7 in F major: Moderato

No.8 in A minor: Vivo

No.9 in A major: Allegro moderato

No.10 in B minor: Lento

No.11 in B major: Allegretto

No.12 in G sharp minor: Allegro

No.13 in D flat major: Grave

The Rachmaninov Prelude above all Rachmaninov Preludes, in terms of popularity at least, is the early inspiration in C sharp minor, the second of his five Morceaux de Fantaisie Op.3. That dramatically doom-laden piece was written in 1892 when the composer was 19 and it haunted him for the rest of his life. No that he hated it quite as much as he is said to have done: he wouldn’t otherwise have given it even more exposure by arranging it for two pianos, as he did in 1938. Interestingly too, neither in 1903, when he wrote the Ten Preludes, Op.23, nor in 1910, when he came to complete his series of 24 preludes in all the keys in Op.32, did he take the opportunity to write a new example in C sharp minor to replace his youthful shocker in that key. And if he really resented the pressure he met at every concert to play the piece as an encore he could have resisted it.

What Rachmaninov surely did not like about the Prelude in C sharp minor was its persistent association with a grotesque scenario, invented by an American journalist, that actually has nothing to do with it. It is true that the gloomy sound of tolling of bells evoked by the opening bars, the solemn harmonies that follow, the urgently agitated middle section and the spectral ending combine to suggest some macabre kind of story. But to Rachmaninov in 1892 these features were probably no more than musical images suggested by the tonality of C sharp minor.

Ten Preludes Op.23

Rachmaninov probably did not intend to make a systematic study of the potential of all twenty-four major and minor keys - as Bach, Chopin and Scriabin had done before him - until some time between the Ten Preludes Op.23 and the Thirteen Preludes Op.32. Unlike his predecessors, all of whom had put their collections together in a logically pre-determined sequence, in the Op.23 Preludes he seems to have chosen the keys more or less at random. He does, however, alternate major and minor and, having opened the set in F sharp minor, he closes it in the matching key of G flat major on the round number of ten. The key of F sharp minor inspired one of the most lyrical Preludes of all: a characteristically plaintive soprano melody, poised over a murmuring figuration in the middle of the keyboard, is answered by a second voice in the bass register in an increasingly passionate dialogue. In contrast, the second Prelude is such a sensational show of strength, with massive B flat major carillons in the right hand over rolling arpeggios in the left, that in his recitals Alexander Siloti, the dedicatee of the Op.23 set, used to take it out of the published order and save it for the end.

Although the third Prelude in D minor is marked Tempo di minuetto, it adopts a far more heroic attitude than an ordinary minuet. If it can be said to anticipate the neo-baroque tendencies of the Op.32 set it is not in the tempo heading but in the contrapuntal exchanges in the middle section and near the end. The fourth Prelude is its direct counterpart, a nocturnal effusion of D major melody presented three times in ever more elaborate keyboard textures. In the popular fifth Prelude in G minor that same kind of contrast, between the heroic and the dreamy, is not only taken to extremes but also contained in the one piece, with a heavily aggressive march in the outer sections and an unreal middle section from another, more peaceful world.

The sixth and seventh Preludes are both closely related to the recently completed Second Piano Concerto in C minor. On this occasion, however, the melodiously romantic sixth in E flat major - which, according to the composer, “came to me all at once on the day my daughter was born” - is separated from its counterpart in C minor, which is being held in reserve for the end of the first half of this recital. It is followed instead by the eighth Prelude in A flat major, which has something of a Chopin Étude about it, with a melodic line urgently rising and falling under cascading arpeggios in the right until activity is stilled in the closing bars. With its rapid right-hand alternation of thirds and sixths, the ninth in E flat minor also seems to derive from the Chopin Études and yet the melodic shape described by the left hand near the end is pure Rachmaninov.

The composer’s own choice for the closing piece in the set was the Prelude in G flat major which, after a modest beginning with an expressive sigh in the left hand and an intimately contrapuntal duet between left and right in the middle, comes to a quietly enraptured conclusion. A different, more spectacular conclusion is supplied by the C minor Prelude which, while sounding like another Chopin Étude in places, experiences some of the same dramatic events as the first movement of the Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor. Rachmaninov himself, incidentally, never played either this seventh Prelude or the eighth in public.

Thirteen Preludes Op.32

Clearly, when he got to work on the Op.32 set the composer had decided to accept the challenge of comparison with Chopin and Scriabin and, like them, complete a series of twenty-four Preludes in all the different keys. There could be no other reason for publishing such an odd number as thirteen. Written not long after the Piano Concerto No.3, they are, however, the work of a very much more mature composer than that of Op.23, let alone the early favourite in C sharp minor Op.3, No.2.

Rachmaninov’s source of inspiration by now was not so much an emotional state suggested by a certain tonality - important though the emotional element still was - as a brilliant technical idea. One of the most fascinating examples is in the first Prelude in C major, where the left-hand arpeggios constantly hit upon an alien A flat or B flat and deflect the harmonies in impulsive tangents away from the key centre. The second in B flat minor, based on a dotted-rhythm pattern which occurs several times in the Op.32 set, is another harmonic tease, its innocent siciliano lilt distracting attention from the deceptive intention of harmonies which withhold the true tonality of the piece until the very end.

Another special feature of the Op.32 set, already evident in the use of the siciliano rhythm in the B minor Prelude, is a neo-baroque tendency, which was not at all common in 1910. Twice in the opening section of the third Prelude in E major, after the dramatic assertion of the tonic key in percussive octaves, there is a fragmentary two-part invention which briefly anticipates the kind of harpsichord figuration to be found in, say, Le Tombeau de Couperin which Ravel would complete seven years later. There is a hint of the baroque also in the fourth Prelude in E minor. It is, however, only a small element in a miniature tone poem which, in its frequent use of bell-like octaves and repeated notes in a variety of colours and rhythmic formations, seems to be inspired by some such literary source as Edgar Allan Poe’s The Bells (which Rachmaninov was to set for voices and orchestra three years later).

Even in the purely lyrical fifth Prelude in G major the melodic line is embellished by elaborate baroque-style decoration before it melts into something totally romantic and nocturnal in the middle. The sixth in F minor seems just momentarily to be setting off on some such fugue as the one at the end of Brahms’s Handel Variations but then gets involved in grim and urgent business of its own. The seventh in F major (another Prelude Rachmaninov never played in public) is a contrastingly idyllic duet between left hand and right round a rhythmic accompaniment carried sometimes by one hand and sometimes by both.

Perhaps the most baroque of them all is the eighth Prelude in A minor, a brightly articulated toccata with a running right hand and a percussive left crossing over it. Paired with the A minor Prelude, and as different as possible from it, is the ninth in A major, which is as darkly sonorous as its predecessor is brilliant: the main melodic interest is consigned for the most part to the bottom end of the range while the right hand miraculously sustains both a counter melody and an arpeggio accompaniment.

The next two preludes are another pair in that they have an element of the siciliano rhythm in common. Inspired by Böcklin’s painting The Return, the tenth in B minor is a tragic conception, more than faintly lugubrious in the chromatic cadences in the outer section and more than slightly violent in the middle. In the eleventh in B major, on the other hand, the same dotted-rhythm figure assumes an expression of unassuming happiness. Ravel is called to mind again by the twelfth in G sharp minor, which is not an anticipation this time and not an echo either but what could almost be an alternative characterisation of the amorous water nymph, Ondine in Gaspard de la Nuit.

Another indication of Rachmaninov’s lasting attachment to the early sensation in C sharp minor is that in the last prelude of Op.32, among the fairly obvious reminiscences of earlier preludes in the same set, there are veiled allusion to Op.3, No.2. Ceremonial in manner, retrospective in function, massively sonorous in scoring, the thirteenth in D flat major is conclusive in every sense.

Gerald Larner©2003