Talk:Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff)

Key of Second Movement
To whom it may concern:

In regard to the tonality of the beginning of the second movement before the piano enters, please just allow me to talk a bit here.

The key signature here in this introduction is for A major or F-sharp minor. However, according to what it actually sounds like (I have perfect pitch) to me and what I deduce from the chords in the complete score, it seems to be D minor instead, despite some chords that seems to be A major tonic". Unfortunately, I have not found any sources that support my view. Before my edits this article claimed the key as "F-sharp minor / D-flat major". But it seemingly comes out that this piece, whether begins in D minor, does not begin in F-sharp minor, which is why I made the edit to the article page.

Could anyone help me out? Your help will be greatly appreciated.

Christopher2625649908 (talk) 10:21, 24 July 2016 (UTC)


 * The second movement indeed begins (and ends) in D minor. JBritnell (talk) 11:33, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

'Selected recordings' revisited
The 'Selected recordings' section has got ridiculously long (35 entries), and there is no obvious criterion for inclusion. I would suggest simply saying the the concerto has been recorded many times (Amazon currently lists about 130, though some of those may be duplicates), with mention of the first recording, with Horowitz as soloist, and the composer's own recording. I'll do this in a few days unless anyone has a better idea. (For comparison, the article for the second concerto has no 'recordings' section at all.) AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:46, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅ Toddst1 (talk) 05:36, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A shorter, but even more arbitrary list had rematerialized. I have expunged it. JBritnell (talk) 21:37, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Inappropriate reference
A long-standing citation on this page was to a 2009 concert review (of Bronfman playing the concerto in Baltimore), which not only lacked any particular authority, but also contained virtually no useful information about the concerto. I can't imagine why it was ever chosen as a source, and I have removed it.

This review was cited twice in the article, apparently at random, since the claims which it purportedly supported were matters which it didn't touch on in any way. One of these claims was that the ossia cadenza is played much more frequently than the other; I suspect this statement is simply false, so I have removed it. (It is true that the ossia generates much more traffic on Youtube, but that is not quite the same thing.) Of course, if anyone can support the claim with proper evidence, then they are welcome to reinstate it.


 * [Edit: Quite by chance, I have found the likely derivation of this claim, a Masters thesis from 1975. But the ultimate source may be Culshaw's book, published in 1950. The whole thing puzzles me a little, but I don't have a copy of Culshaw to verify, and it doesn't matter anyway.]

The second claim is that the concerto ends with a four-note motif which is to be found in various other works by Rachmaninoff. This one is true of course, but I have no suitable reference to hand. I have simply left the claim unsupported in the article, in the hope that someone will more readily be able to add an appropriate citation. (I will dig one up eventually if nobody else does.)

The references generally could use some work, which I will try to find time for. JBritnell (talk) 04:01, 23 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Well I can agree at least that the references need some work. — Dave12121212 ◎ 06:07, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll take care of that (hopefully along with the whole article), maybe when WP:TCC starts. It's probably the most neglected detail of this article. Wretchskull (talk) 18:19, 8 April 2022 (UTC)