Extended Program Note: Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3

Following is an extended version of the program note on Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3 that appears in February 2026 Showcase for the Minnesota Orchestra’s performances on February 13 and 14, 2026.

Sergei Rachmaninoff
B: April 1, 1873, Semyonovo, district of Novgorod, Russia
D: March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills, California

Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Opus 44
Premiered: November 6, 1936

In December 1917, Sergei Rachmaninoff left Russia, never to return. He gave concerts in Scandinavia, lived in Copenhagen for almost a year, then sailed for the U.S. He left Russia a famous composer, a highly esteemed conductor and a most distinguished (part-time) pianist, but he was troubled by the problem of keeping those three lives in balance. With a family to support, he resigned himself to the life of a traveling piano virtuoso, full-time. Rachmaninoff the composer, so fertile between 1900 and 1917, did not write a single major work between March 1917 and January 1926.

Rachmaninoff’s sense of exile, felt keenly in spite of his popularity in America and the presence of friends and colleagues, must have had something to do with the lack of new works, as did his characteristically concentrated commitment to his new bread-winning career as a pianist. But there was another reason: he was changing as a composer. The well that had yielded the expansive melodies of the Second Symphony, the first three piano concertos and many of the preludes and songs, seemed to have gone dry.

Now Rachmaninoff needed to make the most of his talent for economy, concentration and precision that had been consistently in evidence in his shorter piano pieces. And the Symphony No. 3, written in 1935 and 1936, is among the works that represent the composer at his most formidably intelligent and imaginative: it has strength, integrity, vision and atmosphere—built on a mysterious motto and filled with triplets throughout. Cast in three movements rather than the customary four, the symphony contains an abundance of brilliantly orchestrated vignettes, from a serene opening to a witty finale.

THE MUSIC: BEGINNING WITH A MYSTERY

LENTO–ALLEGRO MODERATO. The symphony begins in mystery, with a melody of a certain ecclesiastical cast, restricted to just three notes, and played pianissimo by clarinet, two stopped horns and a single muted cello. This disappears into silence. Then the tempo changes abruptly for a “get ready now” outburst by the full orchestra with those satisfying bass drum and cymbal smacks so typical of Rachmaninoff’s earlier orchestral style. And now, after this taut double introduction, the first movement proper begins with a melody of extraordinary rhythmic subtlety, flexibility and span. 

Pattering triplets scatter the atmosphere. They lead to a new idea that strikes us at first as being in the composer’s old manner but whose phrasing and range are the work of a mind more complex than that of the antebellum Rachmaninoff. A leap forward in tempo, then a subsidence, and the exposition comes to an end.

Everything thus far has been tightly packed, but now, as the development begins, Rachmaninoff allows himself more space. The two bassoons in thirds that start this section off against triplets rising through the strings sound positively Wagnerian. The triplets are the single most pervasive element. The motto intrudes sternly upon the climax, but it is interrupted by a little passage, at once sinister and grotesque, for piccolo, bassoon and xylophone against a chord of muted horns and violas, the latter played with a stick rather than the hair of a bow. The Debussyan harmony is equally alien. The recapitulation, beautifully introduced by a rising passage for violins (a touch of Siegfried here), is full of surprises in its proportions, scoring and harmony. One last muttering reference to the motto closes the movement.

ADAGIO MA NON TROPPO–ALLEGRO VIVACE. The second movement begins with a variant of the same chant, now a horn solo heard against a splendidly spreading bouquet of harp chords. Rachmaninoff moves rapidly from idea to idea. The sequence of events has an upbeating, expectant quality, so that it all feels more like an introduction than a fully settled slow movement. Suddenly the music takes a leap forward, a new quick tempo is set, and a scherzo has begun. Like so much of this symphony, it is full of triplets. Though it is of considerable dimensions, it is only an episode within the Adagio. The return to the earlier music is imaginatively made through a passage of sliding chords for woodwinds with buzzing strings, leading to a chain of ominous violin trills.

Again Rachmaninoff ends with a dark reminiscence of the motto. Throughout the scoring is marvelously rich in fantasy, including such pleasures as a flute solo with harp-and-celesta ripples and a soft curtain of chords on four solo violas, flutter-tongue trumpets mocking the military snare drum, or the single drop of celesta sound in the midst of a sequence of Stravinskian chords for trumpets and horns.

ALLEGRO. The finale is vigorous and in a bright A major. There is an uneasy moment when Rachmaninoff seems to promise one of his big tunes and then fails to deliver, but that disturbance aside, this is an eventful, confident, handsomely shaped, brilliantly scored movement. Much as he had inserted a scherzo into the middle of his Adagio, Rachmaninoff here offers a faster middle section in the form of a virtuosic fugue. This leads to a brief episode of a rather sour funeral music, which in turn introduces an old obsession of Rachmaninoff’s, the Gregorian Dies irae from the Mass for the Dead. With unflagging invention, Rachmaninoff drives the symphony to a roaring (and
slightly capricious) conclusion.

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, xylophone, 2 harps, celesta and strings

Program note excerpted from the late Michael Steinberg’s The Concerto: A Listener’s Guide (Oxford University Press, 1998), used with permission.