Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30

Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is a post-Romantic work in three movements. Its author had, in fact, declared “The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.” Rachmaninov further explained, “What I try to do, when writing down my music, is to make it say simply and directly that which is in my heart when I am composing.” Besides its delightful music and its grandiose style, Piano Concerto No. 3 is famous, above all, for being considerably hard to perform. Although its individual, Lisztienne-styled passages are moderately difficult,  these numerous passages and the continuous presence of the piano over the orchestra’s sound place Rachmaninov’s Concerto atop the peak of piano repertoire. Tailored to Rachmaninov’s big hands and to his affected style, the Piano Concerto No. 3 is now intimately connected to Vladimir Horowitz. As Rachmaninov himself proclaimed: “This is the way I always dreamed my concerto should be played, but I never expected to hear it that way on Earth!”