As a person who was born in the late 30's and was around when the 2nd Piano Concerto literally hit the world, younger people do not realize the intensity of emotion that met the introduction of Rach's 2nd Concerto to the world. It found its way into two movies and was played endlessly by people like Arthur Rubinstein in America, Britain, other parts of Europe, etc. Rach should have made a bundle on this, but given the situation in the 40's, I am sure he didn't. In my book Rach's 2nd Concerto is one of the greatest masterpieces of classical music ever. Nothing about the emotions of this piece is fake and everything about it goes directly to the heart. Rach has some kind of "divine" way with his melodies and we are better off having his musical inspiration in our lives.

I don’t think any other piano concerto comes close to Rachmaninoff. He really managed to get the most out of the instrument together with the orchestra. Truly makes u feel desperate pain when u listen. Constant hope and passion always torn down by a deep sadness.

Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto has always been my favourite piece by him. Since the first time I listened the composer himself playing it I have been hooked by its absolute sincerity. The fact he composed it after a long depression hits very close to home for me, and I think it adds a new dimension to the whole listening experience. Also I was quite shocked when you mentioned he composed his first piano concerto at the age of 18, what a pity he wasn't totally appreciated in his youth.

My personal all-time favorite. My mom played this on our piano when I was young. I will always hold it dear.

The analysis of the Rach 2 is on point, its not common to have recurring theme in all three movements even thought they are subtle in the 2nd and 3rd mvt there’s nothing i can add besides the climaxes of the 3 mvts the way it gradually builds up to the climax then calms right down. The developments contrast from the Exposition and Recapitulation is well written no surprises but prepares you for something is about to come and the coda…very light with a gradual fire in the end

Oh my god I’ve listened to this a hundred times but missed the appearance in the opening and closing of the 2nd movement oh my god he’s brilliant. I have always found so much feeling in the last 3 measures of the 2nd movement, and now my brain understands why my heart is so moved. Also, motif C is the opening piano G-Ab-F-G bit after the 8 bell chords that start the 1st movement (that also appears throughout all 3 movements of the concerto)

The use of the "pivoting figure" is also genius. It's arguably even more pervasive throughout the concerto than the rising line. First, it takes the foreground in the development section of the first movement, where we follow its transformation from a self-conscious and shy melody into a confident march, serving as an accompaniment to the assertive first theme in the recapitulation. The same figure also plays an important role in the coda. In the middle of the second movement, a part of the main melody is revealed to be the same pivoting figure and is explored in length. It can be also spotted in the orchestral introduction, and later in the coda of the finale. Great video!

I'm not sure the title is the most accurate. "Analysis of a Rach theme" might be better. As a composer, I was hoping that you had some insights on HOW Rach comes up w these themes. This vid was an analysis of some (mostly one) of his great themes. That's not a 'how' but a 'that'. lol

Amazing analysis! We need more videos like this!

Couldn't stop playing that first passage you showed for weeks. Absolutely astonishing!

07:06: I think you missed the first two notes of the theme, they are also in the Adagio introduction! I've never heard it before now, and now I can't unhear it! 😁 What a genius, this man!

Absolutely mesmerizing analysis on my favorite piece of classical music of all time. Thank you.

Great analysis! I never put two and two together on the first four bars of the second movement mimicking the A section of the first movement. I always just thought of it as a genius modulation. I think Beethoven's 9 really paved the way for composers to go a bit outside of the box and to start developing the first iteration of 'leimotif' as we know it today, instead of having every movement be a completely separate idea altogether. Bringing back melodies from previous movements was almost unheard of at the time, but Rach geniusly snuck it in there for all of us to still be discussing 120 years later! True genius!

I love 4:35 from the bottom of my heart...I just finished this fantastic concerto a few days ago and I almost cry every time I play this part at a grand piano...On Monday 17th, I will play the theme you analysed infront of my music class...can't wait for it! I love Rachmaninoff! He is the best composer! The 2nd Piano Concerto is the most beautiful piece of music!

I can’t tell how satisfying it was when you brought up the second theme of the first movement reoccurring at end of the second movement. It was like you read my mind. Brilliant video about a most beloved work.

Rach inspires me the most to write my own compositions

This is by far my favorite piano concerto of all time. I'm a senior pro pianist (pop) who was trained early in classical. Explanations like what is shown in this video teaches me how much I have yet to learn. Wonderful, instructive video!!

Wonderful video! I’ve played movements from all four of the Rach concertos, and as I learned concerto 2 first as a younger musician, I never stopped to deconstruct and analyze all the times that motif pops up. In general, the expressive Rach melodies seem like they’re written unconstrained by conventional structure, and as a result feel more ethereal, as if you’re transported to a perfect timeless moment. I do feel he was more structured in his earlier concertos in this regard.

Have been listening to this concerto a lot recently. So beautiful. Thanks!

Congratulations on an excellent piece of analysis that goes some way to doing justice to the magisterial architecture of this splendid concerto. (BTW I'm sure you are right about the closing phrase of the second movement.)

I love this! Thank you so much for opening my eyes! 😊 I'm not going to scroll through all the comments to see if someone else pointed this out, but now that you've got me looking and thinking about this, I think this theme is also hiding in more stretched out form in the first subject material in the second movement. The entrance of the flute in bar 17 includes the rising 4th (B to E) from your 'A' motif--same scale degrees and beats in the measure. Even though this new flute theme rises, it doesn't match the 'A' motif exactly, but the back-and-forth between the G and Ab in the second half of the 'A' motif comes a little bit later in ornamented and stretched-out form when the clarinet enters in bars 20-23. (Of course this time it's G# and A.) The pivot motif (motif 'C') is also there, in the piano in the second half of bar 26--though in diminution (both intervalic and rhythmic) and syncopated. What do you think?

A great melody. Great.

I also realize that the 2nd movement's opening by the orchestra is called a sort of "rhythmic augmentation of that 2nd subject" previously heard by the piano part in the 1st movement. The "rising motive" part. Later on, as the 2nd movement progresses, the violins do a fragment of that rising motive again, but with new material added this time, while the piano plays legato arpeggiated slow triplets.

Great Video! As far as I know, Rachmaninoff first composed the last two movements and then worked on the first movement to complete his concerto. This fact makes his work even more astonishing as he utilized all of the things you mention while he was "reverse-engineering" his own music. Marvellous!

Love this kind of content, keep up the great work 👍

I'm really glad I found this channel! Underrated fr

Frederik, you are wonderfully generous - and talented. Thank you for this video and so many others - each is better than the last (if that's possible).

Thank you for this! Excellent and well-structured video!

Thank you for this very deep analysis. I'll definitely follow your work

Shed light you did! That was marvelous! I could watch hundreds of these. I wouldn't mind more on this concerto, either... something tells me you might have more to say about it :)

You do a great job of highlighting not only Rachmaninov's gift of lyricism but also his grasp and control of musical architecture, which this concerto superbly exemplifies. Thank you!.

Motif C also appears throughout the concert in the most unexpected places

Breathtaking !! Thank you !!

Your videos are such a gold. It inspires me so much! Thank you!!

Brilliant analysis, high quality video production, enjoyed it very much :-)

Beautiful, beautiful piece. Thanks for this great analysis.

Frederick, I would love for you to analyze the opening melody of his 3rd Concerto, which Rachmaninoff said “wrote itself”. The closeness to Slavic church music has always struck me. It’s exquisitely simple and perfect.

An absolutely wonderful analyzation

Fantastic video! I'm learning this lovely concerto right now and despite the amount of times I've listened to it and played it I've never noticed what you've pointed out. I'll make sure to really accentuate the repetition and many iterations of this beautiful melody throughout. Thanks for the new lens!

Thank you for the video, i loved it!

I just heard it in the background and got crazy goosebumps 😢

This made my day

Great video! Thanks

Love your content. Recently listened to this piano concerto at the Cadogan Hall in London, truly a marvellous composition!

8:00 oh my god i never realized this.. just immediately teared up while hearing this.. how did i never notice it?

What a wonderful video. I heard this concerto first in my early teens and have loved it ever since, particularly the recordings of Rachmaninov himself, but I have never delved into its inner structure which learning of makes it even more poignant.

Great video and analysis on my fav piece :D

Interesting analysis thank you. I always felt the melody in first and last movement were the similar but had not really understood what connected them until until now. Thanks. And I can see that middle movement also has some relation.

Lovely, just lovely.

Great video!!! Subbed

Had to pause only 3 mins in. This is intense! AFAIC he was the master of 20th century melodic invention and a gifted orchestrator. Because he worked in an ostensibly old-fashioned style for the time, people often miss his innovations. In rebellion against 12 tone serialism, he incorporated jazz elements in his later works, like the use of the alto sax in symphonic dances.

I was never into classical music until I was about fourteen years old. I was about to go out of the house when I heard my father listening to some music on the record player. The music stopped me on my tracks and I asked my dad what is that music playing. He said the Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto. At the time I didn't quite understand it but that piece of music begun my life-long love affair with the classics.

A stunning analysis about Rachmaninoff's music! he is one of my favourite composers. In spite of a lot of music critics, who consider his music a sort of decadent romance, you have shown in this video the "fil rouge" running across one of his most famous works. BRAVO!

Don't forget that at 6:18, the piano octaves are playing Motif C (this motif in itself is featured heavily during the 1st movement's development section, and is quoted once at the beginning of Mov 3)

Great video! Subscribed

Excellent analysis of the A motif in the first and third movement. I believe Rachmaninov composed the second and third movement's first, before penning the first movement. He must have had that A and B motif in mind somehow? I'd love to your take on the opening them of Rachmaninov's Third Concerto; it, and the scherzo-like second subject provide a deep well of variations and themes throughout that work. Great video, many thanks, made my day!

Thank you, Frederick, I’ve performed this masterpiece a couple of times and shamefully didn’t notice some of these connections in various movements. Your analysis is brilliant. One wonders the extent to which this was conscious in the composer’s mind? We know he wrote this piece in a remarkably short time just after recovering from severe depression.

As some people already commented here, the title of your video is indeed a bit misleading as you are covering how he structured his melody/theme throughout the composition - and it's a great analysis! - just not about how he writes a melody. For that, we would have to look into some music theory and analyze his harmonic progressions, how he built the chords, how the melody is built, how the melody and harmony are related, why he chose certain notes in the melody/harmony over other ones, how he developed his melody from there, etc... Nahre Sol has a video on youtube called How to sound like Rachmaninoff which covers some of these topics

Superb in every way!

The opening melody of Movement 1 of his 3rd Piano Concerto is one of the best melodies every written. I think it's an obvious homage to the opening notes of Brahms' 4th Symphony. Just brilliant, all around.

Despite being a big Rachmaninoff fan I'm surprised I never noticed he used the 2nd theme in the other movements as well! Thank you for making this video :D Also, what's your favorite recording of this concerto or what recording do you recommend? My favorite will be the one played by Alexander Melnikov with the conductor Teodor Currentzis.

Wonderful video!

Between Chopin, Racmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky, sometimes its hard to pick a favorite as far as melody writing goes. I've learned a lot about melodies just from these three composers and its helped me write my own compositions.

this is very useful to me.

Rach's 2nd is easily my second favorite piece of all time. The musical story telling, combined with the wonderful array of incredible melodies is utterly beautiful, I can't get enough of it. György Cziffra's 1970 studio performance is especially wonderful imo, y'all should give it a listen.

Of course you're right about the cameo appearances in movements 2 and 3, I mean the last movement is more of a recap, but yeah it's exactly the kind of thing Rachmaninov would do. Considering the recurrence of the Dies Irae over several different works. More of this sort of thing please, your analysis of melody is particularly useful. Would you do Shostakovitch?

The C motive he also used in diminution during the development, and superposed to the first theme in the reexposition.

Love this video so much - thank you for organizing it in such a digestible way!! Is this part of a larger series on your channel? I would love to see Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1!!

I first learned this work before and then began to perform it around the birth of our first child in mid 2003. The theme to me was an expression of gratitude to the Creator for the wonderful gift of life. I had several tremendous opportunities to perform it with orchestras, and it always was such an exhilarating feeling! You did a tremendous job of taking this theme apart for the average listener and highlighting its continuing impact on the work throughout the 3 movements.

Bloody legend

Analysis, and actual coming up with stuff like this, are two different things.

I appreciate your work so much! I love Rachmaninov from the bottom of my heart and learning new things about his music is so important for me. I am courious if you've heared of Takashi Yoshimatsu. He is contemporary with us and he makes me feel the same Rachmaninov does sometimes. Especially his piano concerto memo flora. He is not covered on youtube that much, it would be interesting project.

Wonderful, intelligent analysis that shed new light on the innate structure of work beloved by millions for many years.

Melodies like this are inspired and are a gift. So if you ask "how" he wrote a melody like this you don't look to analysis and thought, you look to the heart and feeling. As the melody was a gift to him, he in turn makes a gift of the melody to all who understand. Musical literacy helps in the expression but does not create the magic.

Your visuals are topnotch

Am I the only one who loves the first movement more than the second in this concerto? I love the first movement's dark opening theme in the strings against the complimentary dark tumultuous piano accompaniment. And then the recapitulation with the opening theme again in the strings against the chords in the piano above referencing one of the fragments noted in the video!

I love this video

7:39 How delicate remark.

I'd love to see a similar analysis for the 3rd concerto, where the main theme appears in all 3 movements.

Amazing video! One subscriber more

The melody is so beautiful, it's almost painful!

I have been waiting for a new video from you for a long time. But I must say that the thumbnail looks unsettling

Friend - thank you. I am a composer of sorts perhaps you may augment this fine study with a bare-bones analysis of the chordal structure as it helps the melody in question weave through our emotional responses. I am not asking for a musicological treatise, but since you've gone this far already, it might be a treat for all of your listeners to further our understanding. Cheers.

Thanks for the great video! Always been my favorite concerto. And I was wondering what is the main instrument at 5:46 When he said horn but which horn specifically?

i’ll steal this melody

I have the first moment 2nd theme tattooed on my arm!!

❤❤

excellent channel;i did suscribe:for those who are interested in jazz,i highly recommand Tony Winston's one;

Before the so-called war in Ukraine, I was fond of Rachmaninov's concerti - especially the no. 2. Even obsessed. The second movement of the C minor - the E major slow movement - has good melodic lines too like the 1st movement does. Especially for this sesquicentennial anniversary of Rachmaninov's birth coming up on April 1 of this year, this concerto - and all of the other concerti by Rach - will be more important here.

Could you make one more video wich explain the harmonic structure and harmonic fonctional analysis of this concerto? If it is possible, please...

He does what all classical composers do. Takes an old folk tune and passes it off as his own.

This may sound weird, but this concerto has always sounded like the 1930s to me. I don’t exactly know why that decade is evoked in my mind, but I see Art Deco images in my mind when I listen to it. Maybe it’s because he was so ahead of his time and it took the rest of the world thirty years to catch up. Regardless, this is one of the greatest works ever composed.

Please do Rach 3!

Interesting

6:14 That also looks like Motif C in the piano part, no?

Idiot question about the coda to Movement 1 at 6:10 in your video. When the cellos play theme A, it sounds like the piano responds with a variation of theme C, ascending rather than descending ... or am I tone deaf?

Great analysis! However considering the first movement was actually the final movement written by Rachmaninoff for the piece, I think it's more likely that, rather than alluding to the first movement throughout the others, he wrote the thematic material in the first movement based on fragments from the others. That or he just loved yearning upward figures.

Yeah, pretty crazy.

When I listened to this I immediately recognized the melody from a video with the trombonist Carol Jarvis playing a song called 'I Think of You'. I now found some information that says that the song "I Think of You", written in 1941 by Jack Elliott and Don Marcotte, was based on Rachmaninoff's piece. Check out the following video kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bMlgn6pqzNTRpo0.html , it is the exact same melody as Rachmaninoff's piece. LIsten to when she starts to play (here kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bMlgn6pqzNTRpo0.html&t=16s ), and compare with the sheet music for Rachmaninoff's piece. In the current video you can see Rachmaninoff's sheet music and listen to it here kzfaq.info/get/bejne/eNV_ktRiktiqj4U.html .

In my opinion Rach's most beautiful melody is the recapitulation in the first movement of his 4th Piano Concerto: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/a7-dZLmbu9CoaIE.html at 10:33