Judge Dennis Davis
The Romanticism of Sergei Rachmaninoff: Exploring the Second and Third Piano Concertos
Summary
In this lecture, Judge Dennis Davis explores the second and third piano concertos of Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) and the impact that they had on music at the time. He discusses the timing of their creation, coming at the end of a romantic period flowing right from Beethoven through Brahms, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky, and discusses how Rachmaninoff pushed the boundaries of tonal music.
Judge Dennis Davis
Dennis Davis is a judge of the High Court of South Africa and judge president of the Competition Appeals Court of South Africa. He has held professorial appointments at the University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand, as well as numerous visiting appointments at Cambridge, Harvard, New York University, and others. He has authored eleven books, including Lawfare: Judging Politics in South Africa.
Clearly, as I said, Rachmaninoff was influenced, comes from that school of Glinka, Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninoff comes from that, the romantic school, and certainly in some of the starts, some of the beginnings, and definitely the way that both Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff wrapped up their pieces with these great tunes, in inverted commas, there’s a great deal of similarity.