Just like has been featured throughout all of the superb Korean drama Divorce Attorney Shin‘s run, last night’s season finale included another gorgeous piece of classical music.
This time, it was a piece that was played as Attorney Shin (played by Cho Seung Woo) and his friends Jung Shik (Jung Moon Sung) and Heung Geun (Kim Sung Kyun) are at Shin’s apartment, and Jung Shik is telling them he sold his car in an effort to bribe Attorney Park Yoo Seok into telling the truth.
Heung Geun gets up and puts a record on the record player, then tells Shin not to give up on the custody case for his nephew.
After all, the music playing is Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: 1. Allegro ma non tanto.
A piece that is to this day still considered to be one of the most difficult piano concertos to play, and one Russian composer and pianist Rachmaninoff struggled to complete.
How Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: 1. Allegro ma non tanto was used in Divorce Attorney Shin, Ep. 12 to move the story forward
As Heung Geun tells Attorney Shin,
“Rachmaninoff wrote this piece after some really rough times…. This guy, he was going through hell, but then he pushed beyond his limits and put everything he had into making this piece.”
He went on to say, like Rachmaninoff, all three of them needed to “give all that they had” and “go beyond their limits“, so that Shin could win his case against his late sister’s ex-husband.
The three men cry together, but Heung Geun’s gesture and Jung Shik selling his car give Shin the final push to go back into court and win custody of his nephew.
When was Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor composed?
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor was composed in the summer of 1909 in Dresden, Germany.
It was the composer himself who premiered the piece in New York at the end of the same year.
Interestingly, the composer dedicated the work to Polish pianist Josef Hofmann, but he refused to ever perform it in public as it was so difficult.
The performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: 1. Allegro ma non tanto played in Divorce Attorney Shin, Episode 12 was by the late American pianist Byron Janis, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by the late Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti.
That performance was the album Heung Geun played on Divorce Attorney Shin, Episode 12.
It was released in 1991.
Listen to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: 1. Allegro ma non tanto as played on Divorce Attorney Shin, Episode 12 on the Spotify player and in the video.
All 12 episodes of Divorce Attorney Shin are now streaming on Netflix.
You will find more information about the music from Divorce Attorney Shin, and the music itself, on Leo Sigh.