Symphony No. 1 (Rachmaninoff) - Neglect and Disappearance

Neglect and Disappearance

The symphony was not performed again in Rachmaninoff's lifetime. Although it is sometimes said that he tore the score up, he did not in fact do that; but he remained ambivalent about it. In April 1908, three months after the successful premiere of his Second Symphony, he considered revising the First. He wrote his Conservatory colleague Nikita Morozov that the symphony was one of three of his early works that he would like to see in a "corrected, decent form." (The other two compositions were the First Piano Concerto and Caprice Bohémien.) He wrote in 1910 to critic Grigory Prokofiev, "The symphony contains many successful passages insofar as its music is concerned, but the orchestration is worse than weak, a fact that caused its failure at the St. Petersburg performance." In 1917, in a letter to Boris Asafiev, he wrote that he would not show it to anyone and make sure in his will that no one would see it.

Before his departure from Russia, Rachmaninoff gave the key to his writing desk in his Moscow flat to his cousin Sofiya Satin; in it was locked the manuscript score for the First Symphony. He showed her the manuscript and asked her to look after it for him. Satina had the desk moved to her own flat, in the same building. It remained there until Satina emigrated from Russia in 1921. At that time, the manuscript passed into the care of the family housekeeper, Mariya Shatalina (née Ivanova). Shatalina died in 1925. All other manuscripts from Rachmaninoff's flat were moved by the state to archives of the Glinka Museum in Moscow, including the manuscript of the two-piano version of the symphony as well as some sketches for the work, but the manuscript score disappeared. The mysterious disappearance of the score has suggested to some that it may have been appropriated by an opportunist. Regardless of the exact circumstances, the manuscript score remains lost.