Rachmaninoff – Piano Concerto No. 2 | The Concerto Written After Hypnotherapy

Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, complete. 0:00 I. Moderato 10:56 II. Adagio sostenuto 22:02 III. Allegro scherzando THE STORY In March 1897 the premiere of Rachmaninoff's First Symphony was a failure. The critic César Cui wrote that if there were a conservatoire in Hell, and one of its students composed a symphony on "the Seven Plagues of Egypt" like Mr Rachmaninoff's, "he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and delighted the inmates of Hell". Rachmaninoff suffered a psychological breakdown that stopped his composing for three years. He drank heavily and fell into depression. A visit to Leo Tolstoy, meant to break his writer's block, only made it worse. His relatives then took him to Nikolai Dahl, a neurologist who specialised in hypnosis. From January to April 1900, Dahl treated him daily, free of charge, with hypnotherapy, and restored his health and his confidence in composing. The result was this concerto. Rachmaninoff dedicated it to Dahl. The complete work was premiered in Moscow on 9 November 1901, with Rachmaninoff at the piano and his cousin Alexander Siloti conducting, and it was an astounding success. RECORDING Musopen recording (live performance; applause trimmed), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Rachmaninoff died in 1943; the concerto was published in 1901 and is in the public domain. SOURCES Wikipedia, "Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_C...) The recording: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... #Rachmaninoff #PianoConcerto #ClassicalMusic #Piano