Synopsis

In St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1897, the First Symphony of Sergei Rachmaninoff had its disastrous premiere.

Now, there are bad reviews and then there are really bad reviews. When Rachmaninoff opened up a newspaper the next day he read, “If there were conservatory in hell, and if one of its students were instructed to write a symphony based on the seven plagues of Egypt, and if he were to compose a symphony like Rachmaninoff's, he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and delighted the inmates of hell.”

Ouch!

What must have really hurt was that the review was written by a fellow composer, Cesare Cui, and the premiere was conducted — poorly, it seems — by another composer colleague, Alexander Glazunov.

The whole affair was so painful that Rachmaninoff needed therapy before he could compose again, and when he left Russia for good in 1917, he left the symphony’s manuscript behind, and in the turmoil of the Bolshevik revolution it was lost. However, the original orchestral parts for the 1897 premiere survived. They were rediscovered in 1945, two years after Rachmaninoff’s death, and a belated — and this time successful — second performance took place that same year.

Music Played in Today's Program

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Symphony No. 1; St. Petersburg Philharmonic; Mariss Jansons, cond. EMI 56754