101 Classical Music CDs

The older we get, the more we lose that divine self-confidence which is the treasure of youth, the fewer are those moments when we believe that what we have done is good. --Sergei Rachmaninoff, in an interview, at age 56. The Symphonic Dances was the last work Rachmaninoff ever composed. He completed it some four years after his Third Symphony, during a period in his life when "he had become increasingly dissatisfied with himself as a composer and even as a pianist." Yet more compelling evidence that the profession of classical music brings misery to the vast majority of those who enter it. The more I learn about the lives of major classical music composers and musicians, the more I'm relieved that, at age 17, I gave up any serious idea of becoming a professional trumpet player. I can only think how miserable and self-critical I'd be now at age 40. ********************** Mikhail Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) Symphony No. 3 ...

Thanks to a drunk conductor and some harsh criticism, Rachmaninoff's Third Symphony came very close to never being written. In 1897, at the young age of just 23, Sergei Rachmaninoff's career as a composer nearly ended before it began with the premiere of his First Symphony. He had already built a reputation for himself as a master pianist, and he had already composed an opera as well as a few other significant works. But the premiere of his First Symphony, which was poorly performed, badly conducted (by an allegedly drunk Alexander Glazunov) and excoriated by critics, nearly destroyed him. ********************** Mikhail Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) Symphony No. 3 in A minor Symphonic Dances Deutsche Grammophon, 1998 ********************** Rachmaninoff fell into a period of deep depression. It would be four years before he would compose again, and it would be twelve years before he would write another symphony. Fortunately, that symp...