7 Sergey Rachmaninoff 7In his youth, Rachmaninoff was subject to emotional
crises over the success or failure of his works as well as his
personal relationships. Self-doubt and uncertainty carried
him into deep depressions, one of the most severe of which
followed the failure, on its first performance in March
1897, of his Symphony No. 1 in D Minor. The symphony was
poorly performed, and the critics condemned it. During
this period, while brooding over an unhappy love affair,
he was taken to a psychiatrist, Nikolay Dahl, who is often
credited with having restored the young composer’s self-
confidence, thus enabling him to write the Piano Concerto
No. 2 (which is dedicated to Dahl).
Major Creative Activity
At the time of the Russian Revolution of 1905,
Rachmaninoff was a conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre.
Although more of an observer than a person politically
involved in the revolution, he went with his family, in
November 1906, to live in Dresden. There he wrote
three of his major scores: the Symphony No. 2 in E Minor
(1907), the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead (1909),
and the Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor (1909). The last was
composed especially for his first concert tour of the
United States, highlighting his much-acclaimed pianistic
debut on Nov. 28, 1909, with the New York Symphony
under Walter Damrosch. Piano Concerto No. 3 requires
great virtuosity from the pianist; its last movement is a
bravura section as dazzling as any ever composed. In
Philadelphia and Chicago he appeared with equal success
in the role of conductor, interpreting his own symphonic
compositions. Of these, the Symphony No. 2 is the most
significant: it is a work of deep emotion and haunting
thematic material. While touring, he was invited to