SERGEI VASILYEVICH RACHMANINOFF, RACHMANINOFF ALSO
SPELLED RAKHMANINOV, OR RACHMANINOV (MARCH 20 [APRIL 1, NEW STYLE], 1873, ONEG,
NEAR SEMYONOVO, RUSSIA — MARCH 28, 1943, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA, U.S.)
He was the last great
figure of the tradition of Russian Romanticism and a leading piano virtuoso of
his time. He is especially known for his piano concerti and the piece for piano
and orchestra titled Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934). Rachmaninoff was
born on an estate belonging to his grandparents, situated near Lake Ilmen in
the Novgorod district. His father was a retired army officer and his mother the
daughter of a general. The boy was destined to become an army officer until his
father lost the entire family fortune through risky financial ventures and then
deserted the family. Young Sergey’s cousin Aleksandr Siloti, a well-known
concert pianist and conductor, sensed the boy’s abilities and suggested sending
him to the noted teacher and pianist Nikolay Zverev in Moscow for his piano
studies. It is to Zverev’s strict disciplinarian treatment of the boy that
musical history owes one of the great piano virtuosos of the 20th century. For
his general education and theoretical subjects in music, Sergey became a pupil
at the Moscow Conservatory. At age 19 he graduated from the conservatory,
winning a gold medal for his one-act opera Aleko (after Aleksandr Pushkin’s
poem Tsygany [“The Gypsies”]). His fame and popularity, both as composer and
concert pianist, were launched by two compositions: the Prelude in C-sharp
Minor, played for the first time in public on September 26, 1892, and his Piano
Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, which had its first performance in Moscow on October
27, 1901. The former piece, although it first brought Rachmaninoff to public
attention, was to haunt him throughout his life—the prelude was constantly
requested by his concert audiences. The concerto, his first major success,
revived his hopes after a trying period of inactivity. In his youth,
Rachmaninoff was subject to emotional crises over the success or failure of his
works as well as his personal relationships. Self-doubt and uncertainty carried
him into deep depressions, one of the most severe of which followed the
failure, on its first performance in March 1897, of his Symphony No. 1 in D
Minor. The symphony was poorly performed, and the critics condemned it. During
this period, while brooding over an unhappy love affair, he was taken to a
psychiatrist, Nikolay Dahl, who is often credited with having restored the
young composer’s self-confidence, thus enabling him to write the Piano Concerto
No. 2 (which is dedicated to Dahl). At the time of the Russian Revolution of
1905, Rachmaninoff was a conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre. Although more of an
observer than a person politically involved in the revolution, he went with his
family, in November 1906, to live in Dresden. There he wrote three of his major
scores: the Symphony No. 2 in E Minor (1907), the symphonic poem The Isle of
the Dead (1909), and the Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor (1909). The last was
composed especially for his first concert tour of the United States,
highlighting his much-acclaimed pianistic debut on November 28, 1909, with the
New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch. Piano Concerto No. 3 requires great
virtuosity from the pianist; its last movement is a bravura section as dazzling
as any ever composed. In Philadelphia and Chicago he appeared with equal
success in the role of conductor, interpreting his own symphonic compositions.
Of these, the Symphony No. 2 is the most significant: it is a work of deep
emotion and haunting thematic material. While touring, he was invited to become
permanent conductor of the Boston Symphony, but he declined the offer and
returned to Russia in February 1910. The one notable composition of
Rachmaninoff’s second period of residence in Moscow was his choral symphony The
Bells (1913), based on Konstantin Balmont’s Russian translation of the poem by
Edgar Allan Poe. This work displays considerable ingenuity in the coupling of
choral and orchestral resources to produce striking imitative and textural
effects. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Rachmaninoff went into his
second self-imposed exile, dividing his time between residences in Switzerland
and the United States. Although for the next 25 years he spent most of his time
in an English-speaking country, he never mastered its language or thoroughly
acclimatized himself. With his family and a small circle of friends, he lived a
rather isolated life. He missed Russia and the Russian people—the sounding
board for his music, as he said. And this alienation had a devastating effect
on his formerly prolific creative ability. He produced little of real
originality but rewrote some of his earlier work. Indeed, he devoted himself
almost entirely to concertizing in the United States and Europe, a field in
which he had few peers. His only substantial works from this period are the
Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (1936), another expression of sombre, Slavic melancholy,
and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra, a set of
variations on a violin caprice by Niccolò Paganini. Rachmaninoff’s last major
work, the Symphonic Dances for orchestra, was composed in 1940, about two years
before his death.
TRACKLIST
5727 RACHMANINOFF – Polka de W. R. (Wassily Rachmaninoff)
5728 KEY-RACHMANINOFF – The Star-Spangled Banner
5750 RACHMANINOFF – “Fantasy Pieces”, Op. 3, No. 2, c# Prelude
5754 RACHMANINOFF – “Fantasy Pieces”, Op. 3, No. 3, E Mélodie
5796 RACHMANINOFF – “7 Salon Pieces”, Op. 10, No. 5, G Humoresque
6064 MOUSSORGSKY-RACHMANINOFF – Hopak fr “Sorochintsky Fair”
6089 RACHMANINOFF – Etude-Tableau, Op. 39, No. 6, a
6176 RACHMANINOFF – Lilacs, Op. 21, No. 5
6210 KREISLER-RACHMANINOFF – Liebesleid (Love’s Sorrow)
6244 RACHMANINOFF – “Fantasy Pieces”, Op. 3, No. 5, b-b Serenade
6253 TCHAIKOVSKY – Valse, Op. 40, No. 8 Ab
6297 HENSELT – Etude, Op. 2, No. 6 Si oiseau j’étais (Were I a Bird)
6492 GLUCK-SGAMBATI-Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Opera “Orféo”
6577 SCHUBERT-RACHMANINOFF – Wohin (Whither)
6648 BACH – Keyboard Partita No. 4, S. 828, D Sarabande
6877 BEETHOVEN-RUBINSTEIN – Turkish March – “Ruins of Athens”
6925 RACHMANINOFF – “Fantasy Pieces”, Op. 3, No. 1 Elégie, eb
6937 SCHUBERT- Impromptu, Op. 90, No. 4, Ab
6959 RACHMANINOFF – Etude-Tableau, Op. 39, No. 4, b
7030 RIMSKY-KORSAKOV-RACHMANINOFF – Flight of the Bumblebee
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