Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2

Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

Joshua Weilerstein

Arts, Performing Arts, Music

4.9 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We humans seem to love comeback stories, and there is no comeback quite as compelling in the classical music world as Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. It was written three years after the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony, a premiere so catastrophic that it lives on in the annals of musical history, and is the essential starting point for understanding the Second Piano Concerto and how it came to be.

The concerto revived both Rachmaninoff's career and his spirits, and it remains his most famous orchestral work. It is a towering masterpiece of Romanticism, overflowing with glorious melody after glorious melody, supported by virtuosic and sumptuous writing for the solo piano, and a deeply satisfying orchestral part that continues to make audiences swoon around the world.

Today on the show, we'll begin with the story of Rachmaninoff's First Symphony, and then walk through this extraordinary concerto, highlighting what truly makes Rachmaninoff's music so special. Hint: it's not just the pretty melodies.

Recording: Vladimir Ashkenazy with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin cond.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Sticky Notes, the Classical Music Podcast.
0:09.0	My name is Joshua Weilerstein. I'm a conductor, and I'm the music director of the
0:12.7	Orchestra Nacional Delis, and the chief conductor of the Allborg Symphony.
0:16.7	This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready
0:21.4	to dive in to this amazing world of incredible music. Before we get started, I want to thank my new
0:26.6	Patreon sponsors, Ravencloud, Sharon, and David, and all of my other Patreon sponsors for making
0:32.9	season 11 possible. If you'd like to support the show, please head over to patreon.com slash sticky
0:38.5	notes podcast. And if you are a fan of the show, please take a moment to give us a rating or
0:42.5	review on Apple Podcasts. It is greatly appreciated. So, happy new year to everybody and welcome to
0:52.2	season 11 of Sticky Notes.
0:58.4	There's not really going to be that much different about the show than season 10, except for the episodes that I mentioned during my episode about Handel's Messiah, where I'm going to be
1:02.9	inviting some guests to kind of teach me pieces that I don't know very well.
1:07.0	One of the pieces we're going to be doing is Bach's well-tempered clavier with my good friend, the great harpsichordist, Mahanas Fahani, and there's going to be plenty more of that to come. For this week, I wanted to start with a concerto that is just one of my favorites and a piece that even though it's so popular, I think it's a little bit underrated, Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto.
1:31.7	For me, conducting wise, this week I am in Israel with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time, and then next week I will be back with my beloved orchestra
1:35.8	nasina del Lille, doing Shostakovich's 10th symphony, and a piece by Noah Bendix-Balgly,
1:41.8	the concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic.
1:44.9	This is a concerto that Noah himself wrote called Fiddle Fantasia.
1:49.4	It is an absolutely fantastic piece based on Klesmer music, and I can't wait to be doing it with him.
1:56.2	Thanks so much for all of your support over these years, and on to Season 11 and Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto. The From the pen of composer and critic Cesar Cui, after the premiere of Rachmaninoff's first symphony,
2:40.6	quote, if there were a conservatory in hell, and if one of its talented students were to compose a
2:46.6	program symphony based on the story of the ten plagues of Egypt, and if he were to compose a
2:52.3	symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff's, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly, and would
	...

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