By Milner Fuller
Manager of Classical Programming
In the world of music competitions, certain works don’t just test a performer, they announce them. Few do that more clearly than Piano Concerto No. 3 by Sergei Rachmaninoff. (Click here to listen.)
By now, it’s more than repertoire. It’s a signal.
In 2013, while working for the American Pianists Awards, I remember saying to a pianist friend that one contestant had played an especially strong first round—and that it probably put a target on the contestant’s back. Strong performances in competitions don’t always bring relief; they often bring scrutiny.
In that same conversation, when I mentioned that a different contestant would be playing Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto in the finals, my friend responded without hesitation, “That’s the contestant with a target on their back.”
That exchange has stayed with me, because it captures exactly how this concerto functions in competition culture.
Difficulty as Declaration
Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto appears in nearly every major piano competition final. That isn’t coincidence; it’s a reflection of what the piece has come to represent.
Choosing Rach 3 is a declaration: I can handle this.
Its difficulty is immediate and legible. Even listeners without technical training can sense the stamina, coordination, and control required. In a competitive environment, that visibility matters. Difficulty becomes evidence, and evidence becomes advantage.
Judges hear it. Audiences feel it. Other competitors certainly register it, because once Rachmaninoff’s Third enters the room, the terms of evaluation change, much the way a Simone Biles routine or a Shohei Ohtani season forces judges and analysts to rethink not who belongs at the top, but how excellence is being measured.
And once that choice is made, expectations rise. The target sharpens.
A Familiar Role Across Instruments
Rachmaninoff’s Third isn’t unique in this way. Every competitive ecosystem develops its own benchmarks—works that function both as repertoire and as rites of passage.
For pianists, Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata plays a similar role: sprawling, punishing, and impossible to fake. For violinists, Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor—especially the sprawling Chaconne—serves much the same purpose. These pieces announce seriousness, ambition, and technical fearlessness.
They also do something else: they concentrate attention. Playing them well doesn’t remove scrutiny; it intensifies it.
What Competitions Reward, and What They Can’t
Competitions aren’t wrong to value technical command. Accuracy, control, projection, consistency under pressure are real skills, and Rachmaninoff’s Third is exceptionally good at revealing whether a pianist has them.
But the concerto doesn’t test only those skills.
Its deeper challenge is artistic, not athletic. Rach 3 is difficult to shape. It resists restraint. It invites excess—more sound, more drive, more urgency. And competition culture, by necessity, tends to reward what reads immediately. When differentiation is essential, bigger can feel safer than subtler.
I once heard a judge observe that a contestant playing Rachmaninoff’s Third had mastered the mechanics of the piece but seemed unsure how to inhabit it. Everything was present except a governing idea.
That gap—between execution and understanding—is exactly what competition culture struggles to evaluate, especially when difficulty itself carries so much weight.
Judgment, proportion, patience: these are harder to demonstrate in a few high-stakes performances, and harder still to rank. They don’t always electrify a room.
A Very Contemporary Tension
This problem extends far beyond music competitions.
We live in a culture that prizes visible achievement: rankings, metrics, outcomes, résumés. We are excellent at measuring what can be demonstrated quickly and publicly and far less adept at valuing qualities that unfold over time, though modern analytics are better than previous methods. Difficulty often substitutes for meaning. Endurance masquerades as depth.
Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto thrives in this environment not because it is shallow, but because it exposes the limits of how we evaluate excellence. The same piece that identifies a frontrunner can also reveal how incomplete our measuring tools really are.
Beyond the Bullseye
Outside the competitive arena, the concerto behaves differently. Freed from rankings and elimination rounds, the question shifts. It’s no longer “Can they get through it?” but “What are they choosing to do with it?”
That’s where the piece becomes genuinely compelling. The difficulty doesn’t disappear, but it recedes, allowing space for thought, proportion, and risk of a subtler kind. The target fades not because the music is easier, but because the frame has changed.
If all this talk of targets and spectacle has you curious about what’s actually happening when great pianists take on Rach 3, there’s no better way to hear it for yourself. Join the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s “Romantic Powerhouses: Rachmaninoff 3 and Tchaikovsky” at the Hilbert Circle Theatre on January 23 at 7:30 PM and January 24 at 5:30 PM, featuring pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk and conductor Thierry Fischer in this towering concerto and Tchaikovsky’s dramatic Manfred Symphony to follow.
Tickets are available now, and whether you come to marvel at the athleticism, savor the artistry, or listen for the distinction between the two, it’s an evening that will reward close listening.