Ask anybody moderately educated in music about Rachmaninoff and the immediate connections that come to mind will either deal with his second or third piano concertos. One is one of the most beautiful works ever written for the piano concerto genre (no.2) and the other finds itself among the most difficult of concertos (no.3).

However, Rachmaninoff wrote four piano concertos and while the middle two get the most recognition and performance time, the two outer works are just as equally important to the composer's development, like the underrated Piano Concerto No.1 in F-sharp minor, Op.1.

The work was completed in 1892 when Rachmaninoff was 19. The work would go through a thorough revision in 1917. The concerto was an unusual process for Rachmaninoff as it is not entirely original in the context of its form. Rachmaninoff at the time of his composition study was advised to base his efforts on a specific model for their first attempts in new forms. For this concerto, Rachmaninoff chose a personal favorite, the Grieg Concerto in A minor, Op.16, and adapted the entire musical structure of the outer two movements to the Grieg work, literally building his music into it. It was an interesting experiment for the composer and was used only once as the other Concertos from Rachmaninoff are more daring and "original."

1. Vivace

Part 1

Part 2

From the earliest part of his career, Rachmaninoff used his own skills as a performer to explore the expressive possibilities of his instrument. Even in the earliest of his works, which could include this concerto before its 1917 revision, he revealed a sure graps of ideomatic keyboard writing and a superb gift for melody.

2.Andante cantabile


Regardless of this concertos' weaknesses in its lack of musical invention and its overly simplistic dramatic contrasts, the work demonstrates a great level of potential for larger and more complex projects - a great achievement for a composer of young an age as Rachmaninoff.

The harmony of the work may be considered conservative and the development of the first movement sees overly relied dependence on repetitions that don't speak much in terms of structure. For the reflective nocturne of the second movement (only 74 bars long) the texture is less cumbersome in the revised version, and the harmonies remain the same but are enlivened by occasional chromatic notes. The third movement showed promising signs of expansive theme development, a cornerstone of the second and third concertos, but the particular theme of the movement found itself difficult to be treated without sounding contrived. Nonetheless, the work is of a great level for a composer of such a young age and it would go under significant revision in 1917 to further perpetuate it.

4. Allegro scherzando


Of all the works Rachmaninoff revised, the first concerto was perhaps the most successful out of all the works he later touched. Using an acquired knowledge of harmony, orchestration, piano technique and musical form, he transformed an early, immature composition into a "concise and spirited work" (Gregory Norris).

However, with all the work that went into the concerto, Rachmaninoff became slightly frustrated that it did not see the same light as was shown towards his second and third concertos which had been written long before (1901 for No.2, 1909 for No.3). In a conversation with Albert Swan, Rachmaninoff said:
"I have rewritten my First Concerto; it is really god now. All the youthful freshness is there, and yet it plays itself with so much more easily. And nobody pays attention. When I tell them in America that I will play the First Concerto, they do not protest, but I can see by their faces that they would prefer the Second or Third."

Luckily for us, the videos provided are one of the most noted recordings ever made of this concerto. It is the 1959 recording featuring Sviatoslav Richter on the piano and Kurt Sanderling conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. Some have said this recording to be superior that of Rachmaninoff's own performance and of Mikhail Pletnev.