Form
Compared with its predecessors, the Fourth Concerto contains sharper thematic profiles along with a refinement of textures in keyboard and orchestra. These qualities do not lead to greater simplicity but to a different sort of complexity. It was also a continuation of Rachmaninoff's long-range creative growth: the Third Concerto and the recomposed First Concerto were less heavily orchestrated than the Second Concerto. In keeping with its general character, the Fourth Concerto is lighter still, yet more oblique.
The concerto is in three movements:
- Allegro vivace (G minor)
- Largo (C major)
- Allegro vivace (G minor → D-Flat Major → G major)
Rachmaninoff had already been making a more extensive use of short thematic motifs and strong rhythmic patterns in his Op. 32 Preludes, in place of what was called the "unmentionable restlessness" that made his work, especially the concertos, a distressing experience for some musicians. This refinement of musical language, especially in orchestration, went back at least to The Bells and a more astringent tone was already noticeable in songs like "The Raising of Lazarus", Op. 34, No. 6.
Read more about this topic: Piano Concerto No. 4 (Rachmaninoff)
Famous quotes containing the word form:
“The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practicised. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“Form and function are a unity, two sides of one coin. In order to enhance function, appropriate form must exist or be created.”
—Ida P. Rolf (1896–1979)
“Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everything ... and that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself.”
—William Barrett (b. 1913)