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Probably the most revered of Rachmaninoff’s compositions is the Second Piano Concerto, a work whose existence is attributed to the auto-suggestion therapy of a Dr. Nicholas Dahl. Rachmaninoff’s need for the good doctor’s services came about in ....

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... quality..." He did write the concerto, dedicating it to Dahl, and it is indeed of excellent quality, a judgment audiences have been making since it was played by the composer for the first time on October 27, 1901. It immediately took its place as one of the quintessential romantic showpieces for piano and orchestra, and this in spite of the fact that the solo is often sonically buried in unyielding orchestral textures. There are, to be sure, virtuosic flights aplenty for the piano, and lyrical ones, too, but the work is hardly all the pianist’s show. The Concerto opens with a series of rather ponderous, static, unaccompanied piano chords wh ...