Talk:Piano Concerto No.4, Op.40 (Rachmaninoff, Sergei)

Missing/duplicated pages in 2nd ver.

Hallo.

This is about the 2nd version of the Concerto (the first listed on this page), whose score has just been posted.

Thanks for posting this - it's really interesting to see how Rachmaninov had earlier written this concerto, and I've never seen any earlier versions before. And while the final version may represent the composer's final thoughts and perhaps the most binding ones, there certainly may be merit in sometimes performing the earlier versions, as they have their own points of interest (just like the early version of the Bb-minor Piano Sonata). I guess I'll probably never actually hear this earlier version of the Concerto, though, and may just have to imagine it from the score, and maybe try parts out on the piano myself.

So thanks for that.

There's just one problem, though - and it would be good if it could be fixed. Unfortunately, in three separate places in the last movement, a double page has been duplicated, and (at the same point) one omitted. The page sequences goes like this (I will give both the pages in the edition and the page within the .pdf file):

  88- 89 (score) - 46 (.pdf)
  90- 91 (score) - 47 (.pdf)
  90- 91 (score) - 48 (.pdf) *
  94- 95 (score) - 49 (.pdf)
  96- 97 (score) - 50 (.pdf)
  98- 99 (score) - 51 (.pdf)
  98- 99 (score) - 52 (.pdf) *
 102-103 (score) - 53 (.pdf)
 104-105 (score) - 54 (.pdf)
 106-107 (score) - 55 (.pdf)
 106-107 (score) - 56 (.pdf) *
 110-111 (score) - 57 (.pdf)
  • At these points, it can be seen that, instead of pages being duplicated, pp. 92-93 (score) - 48 (.pdf) should appear the first time, pp. 100-101 (score) - 52 (.pdf) the second time, and pp. 108-109 (score) - 56 (.pdf) the third time.

Even if the original .pdf file can't be changed, would it be possible, please, to post the missing double pages as a separate, short file? That would at least enable complete printing out of the score, if not easy viewing on a screen within a single .pdf file.

Thanks. M.J.E. 10:03, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if it's too late to add to this thread, especially since this is the old version of the discussion page. But I have belatedly (13 years later!) noticed that another copy has been posted to this site of the 2nd version of this concerto which restores the missing pages I mentioned in the previous post, just above.

Just expressing my thanks for this, and sorry I didn't acknowledge it over a decade earlier. To be honest, I didn't expect that it would be possible to restore those pages, and I believed it was likely that the original PDF file, with the missing pages, was all that was available - so I didn't even make a point of monitoring this page to see if my request was acted upon.

So, whoever provided the repaired version, my thanks for responding to my request. If I'd guessed that it would even be possible to restore those pages, I would have kept an eye on this page, and acknowledged the response much, much earlier.

It's good that earlier versions of Rachmaninov's piano concertos are becoming available, both as scores and in performances (some of which are now on YouTube). And it's very evident that earlier versions of many large-scale works of Rachmaninov that he revised contain a lot of very attractive music that he just slashed out in the revised version. How he could do this, I don't know - but he seemed to be extremely sensitive to any doubts about whether his works were too long, and ruthlessly cut parts out when he revised them. (Rachmaninov pieces too long? - that is impossible!) To be sure, the revised versions also include new material, or at least new variants of existing material, and I'm glad that we also have that. In short, given that Rachmaninov produced 2 or 3 versions of some pieces, I am glad that all the versions are available, because they all seem to have their own merit.

So my thanks to those who make the effort to make the lesser-known versions of Rachmaninov's music available.M.J.E. 08:57, 28 December 2023 (UTC)