Most of Rachmaninoff’s last years were devoted to touring as a concert pianist and committing his works to records. Between 1936 (when he completed the Third Symphony) and his death in 1943, he wrote only one new large composition, the Symphonic Dances, which qualifies as his only “American” piece, composed on Long Island after the outbreak of war made it impossible for him to return to Europe. While sketching the work he intended to entitle the three movements “Morning,” “Midday,” and “Evening”—possibly intended as an analogy with youth, maturity, and death—but in the end he dropped any programmatic references.

Though the premiere was generally successful, critics simply labeled the Symphonic Dances “a rehash of old tricks,” putting a cloud over the work for a number of years. Lately it has emerged into the repertory, a change that has gone hand-in-hand with the general reevaluation of Rachmaninoff’s work as a whole. Until very recently, he was regarded as a reactionary by musical intelligentsia; times are changing, though, and his star has risen again.

As so often in his music, Rachmaninoff refers to the chants of the Russian Orthodox Church and quotes the Roman Catholic Dies irae as well (it must have been his favorite tune—he used it probably more often than any other composer in the history of music). The score also gave him an opportunity to come to terms with the most catastrophic failure of his life. The premiere of his First Symphony in 1897 under the baton of Alexander Glazunov—reputedly drunk at the time—must have been indescribably bad, to such an extent that the manuscript was put aside and then apparently lost in the Russian Revolution. (Only two years after the composer’s death did the orchestral parts turn up in Leningrad, allowing the work to be reconstructed.) The failure so deeply affected the young composer that he gave up composition entirely for several years, and only after extensive therapy and hypnosis did he return with one of his most successful works, the Second Piano Concerto.

Evidently he still recalled that old failure in 1940, since the first movement coda of the Symphonic Dances quotes the main theme of the First Symphony—music he was sure no one would ever hear again—but turns the darkly somber melody into something more resigned, as if all that he had produced in the meantime had somehow laid to rest the bogey of that first bitter failure.

A brief introduction hints at the prevalent rhythm leading to the principal material, elaborated through varied harmonies and orchestral colors. The main section dies away in a reversal of the introduction, and the middle section begins wonderfully with woodwinds alone. A gently rocking figure becomes the background to the ravishing melody in the alto saxophone. The return to the opening material comes by way of a developmental passage based on the principal themes. When C minor brightens to C major, the coda converts the dark, minor, chantlike theme from Rachmaninoff’s “lost” First Symphony into something altogether consoling in the major, a broad melody in the strings against brightly kaleidoscopic figures elsewhere in the orchestra.

Though written in 6/8 time, the second movement is a waltz, but not one of those lilting carefree Viennese waltzes that seduces the listener into joie de vivre. It is altogether more melancholy, oddly chromatic, turning strange melodic corners. When the violins take up the theme in parallel thirds (a technique characteristic of the most sugary romantic waltzes), we hear that the sweetness has turned to vinegar. They recall the end of an era, much as Ravel’s La valse does and as Stephen Sondheim was later to do in his score to A Little Night Music.

The last movement draws together two of Rachmaninoff’s favorite sources for thematic inspiration: the chant of the Russian liturgy and the Dies irae melody—unlikely material to find in a dance. The chant tunes are subjected to rhythmic syncopations that change their character considerably. The Dies irae appears in the outer sections of the movement, sometimes plain, sometimes cleverly disguised. An important new theme first heard in the English horn is a rhythmically disguised version of the Russian chant to the words “Blessed be the Lord”; it forms the basis for an exhilarating dance passage. Shortly before the end of the piece, Rachmaninoff introduces a new chant-related melody in clarinets and violins over bassoons and trumpets; the remainder of the orchestra is silent. Here he wrote into his score the word “Alliluya,” a reference to his 1915 choral All-Night Vigil from which this section is derived. But it is perhaps also the composer’s own hymn of thanks for having the strength to finish this, his last score. He made his thoughts still clearer at the end of the manuscript, which he signed with the words, “I thank thee, Lord.” —© Steven Ledbetter