Rachmaninoff's 2nd¹ and 3rd² piano concertos get all the love, but what about his first? I've listened to it a few times but either it's not very memorable or I wasn't paying close enough attention. For my 2nd 2022 music project I thought it would be fun to listen to it more closely. Like it was my school assignment to do so.

Sometimes these things sound more fun in my head. But now I'm in too deep, so off we go.

1st Movement

Like most Rachmaninoff and/or late-Romantic pieces, there's a lot of chromatics. The main theme is pretty rich harmonically, which I've notated below.

Nothing truly crazy, but I thought the modulation progression from F♯m → G♯7 → C♯m → D♯7 and then moving backward to C#m by way of G♯7 (instead of the more natural G♯m) was neat. And then using the G♯ as a pedal tone around the Bm6 to eventually resolve to C#7 was also neat. It's very satisfying and natural. Kinda reminiscient of the third concerto (or vice versa, I guess) with a simple main theme with some meandering chromatics and then eventually resolving to V7 - i.

1. I like Yuja Wang's interpretation best
2. Arcadi Volodos does a great ossia cadenza, and Yuja Wang does a great non-ossia cadenza