Born on April 1, 1873, on the estate of Oneg, near Novgorod in Russia; Died on March 28, 1943, in Beverly Hills, California
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, op. 30
Allegro ma non tanto
Intermezzo
Finale
Composed: 1909
First Performance: 1909 in New York City
Last Nashville Symphony performance: May 4, 2019
Estimated length: 40 minutes
In 1909, Sergei Rachmaninoff embarked on his first North American tour, appearing both as conductor and pianist. He needed a substantial new work to add to a solo repertoire still drawn largely from his own compositions, and the result was the Third Piano Concerto. He composed it that summer at Ivanovka, his family estate more than 250 miles southeast of Moscow, where the quiet countryside gave him the seclusion he needed to work.
The concerto was therefore Russian in origin but American in destination. Rachmaninoff gave the world premiere in New York on November 28, 1909, with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony. A few weeks later, Gustav Mahler—then leading the rival New York Philharmonic—conducted another performance of the concerto, with Rachmaninoff himself as soloist.
The tour greatly increased Rachmaninoff’s profile in the United States, but it also left him intensely homesick. That experience took on added resonance after the Russian Revolution eventually forced him into permanent exile. The Third Concerto thus belongs to an earlier chapter in his life, yet already links the Russian world he cherished with the American one in which he would spend his final decades.
The Third has since acquired an almost mythic reputation for its technical demands—hence the familiar shorthand “Rach 3”—but Rachmaninoff conceived it as far more than a virtuoso obstacle course. It presented him simultaneously as pianist and composer, with the orchestra playing an active role throughout. (Curiously, he himself found the Third “more comfortable” to play than the Second Piano Concerto.)
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
The concerto begins with striking simplicity. Over a quiet orchestral accompaniment, the piano introduces a narrow, chant-like melody recalling the contours of Russian liturgical music.
Rachmaninoff denied that he had borrowed an Orthodox chant or folk song: the theme, he said, simply “wrote itself.” Its modest character gives little warning of the enormous scale the movement will eventually reach.
The piano ranges from delicate, interwoven lines to massive chords, culminating in the first movement’s huge cadenza. Rachmaninoff even supplied two versions, one more overtly brilliant than the other. Yet the cadenza is not an interruption for display; it grows out of the movement’s material and becomes one of its structural high points. The movement then ends unexpectedly quietly, with the piano trailing away.
The Intermezzo begins with an oboe melody while the pianist remains silent. When the soloist enters, the music unfolds through a series of variations, including a little waltz in which the concerto’s opening theme reappears in disguise. A sudden outburst from the piano then carries the music directly into the finale.
Here Rachmaninoff brings back ideas heard earlier while continually adding new ones, gradually drawing the whole concerto together. The piano is given freer rein as the music gathers momentum toward its emphatic close, sealed by the long-short-short-long rhythmic pattern that became one of Rachmaninoff’s recognizable signatures.
Scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, harp and strings
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
Featured on Two Giants: Guerrero & Bronfman — November 19 to 21, 2026
Nashville Symphony
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
Yefim Bronfman, piano
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