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Rachmaninoff's Piano Sonata in D Minor

The only adjective that can be ascribed to it is "Rachmaninovian". It's a sprawling piece that showcases the best aspects of Rachmaninoff's compositional style: the lyricism, the dense voicing, the chromaticism, the protracted buildups, the intense climaxes, the pathos, and the yearning. The scale of the piece is also typical Rachmaninoff. A lot of people think this particular sonata is inferior to Rachmaninoff's second. And indeed, the D Minor Sonata leaves a lot to be desired structurally, notwithstanding the extensive edits Rachmaninoff made to it. But it's still a very special piece. One may still turn to it for things that one wouldn't find anywhere else. And isn't that the point of music ultimately? To give you feelings and emotions, thoughts and states of mind, that you wouldn't find elsewhere?

The three movements are motivically very different, as is typical in piano sonatas. The first is tumultuous, dark, and passionate; the second is mellow; and the third is exuberant. Rachmaninoff had a thing for writing his multi-movement pieces like this. His second and third piano concerti are structured in a similar way. So is his first symphony, if you ignore the Largo (there are many reasons not to ignore the Largo, of course, including the fact that it's one of the best movements in all of music, but just for the sake of argument). Rachmaninoff also had a penchant for bringing back motifs from earlier movements in order to tie the whole piece together that sets him apart from other composers. He does this rather obviously in the D Minor Sonata, though not in a great degree. By contrast, the fourth movement of his D Minor Symphony hearkens back to all earlier movements.

The D Minor Sonata is an epic composition that I'm rather inclined to dub a "solo concerto/symphony for the piano" after Alkan's massive and noteworthy endeavors in that style of composition.

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