The Isle of the Dead - Orchestre Métropolitain

Sergei RACHMANINOFF

1873-1943

“You will be able to dream yourself into the dark world of shadows.” This is what Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin wrote to the woman who had commissioned his painting Die Toteninsel (The Island of the Dead) upon delivering it to her in 1880. Almost thirty years later, Sergei Rachmaninoff chose to leave Russia to escape the political unrest shaking the Tsarist Empire. In Paris, he came face to face with a reproduction of Böcklin’s work, which inspired him to compose the symphonic poem of the same name, completed in 1907.

With The Isle of the Dead, Rachmaninoff sought to recreate in music the unsettling atmosphere emanating from the painting. The unusual 5/8 meter (5 eighth notes per measure) of the opening Lento mirrors the asymmetrical movement of a boat rocked by the waves. A lone rower ferries a mysterious figure draped in white, along with what appears to be a coffin, toward a grim island that fills almost the entire painting. Some have interpreted this as an allusion to the crossing of the River Styx leading to the realm of the dead. Like the opaque waters surrounding the shore, Rachmaninoff’s music is dark and foreboding. In this symphonic poem infused with Wagnerian sonorities, Böcklin’s painting comes alive, inviting the listener to imagine what awaits the characters upon reaching land. The work’s inexorable ending suggests that the rower, relieved of his burden, returns to the mainland, leaving the island once more in its frozen stillness.