Sergei Rachmaninoff - Biography
Sergei Vassellivich Rachmaninoff was born Semyonovo Russia on April 1st 1873 and died on March 28th 1943 in Beverly Hills California. His father and mother and mother had aristocratic backgrounds and who were also amateur musicians. Rachmaninoff grew up in a large family estate near Novgorod. Rachmaninoff’s mother was to teach him to play the piano at a very early age but it was his paternal grandfather who as a distinguished musician realized how talented he was and arranged for Sergei to be professionally trained by a St. Petersburg teacher. The family ran into financial difficulties sold their estate and moved to Moscow in his adolescence. He was to study in the Moscow Conservatory with his cousin pianist Alexander Siloti a famed pupil of Liszt along with theoretical studies with well known composers Arensky and Taneyev. In his late teens he met and was friendly with Tchaikovsky who died when Rachmaninoff was twenty. His graduation piece was the fine one hour opera Aleko in 1891. The following year he was to compose the once enormously popular Prelude in C sharp minor which Rachmaninoff eventually grew to despise because audiences demanded that he perform it at all his concerts. His First Piano Concerto was written at the same time but heavily revised twenty five years later. The lovely chamber piece Trio Eligique was written in memory of Tchaikovsky soon after his death. While his career as a concert pianist was from the start was enormously successful he initially had a hard time as a composer. His FIrst Symphony had a disastrous premiere in 1897.His other compositions from this period met with little success He had a bad experience when he met his literary idol Tolstoy who was notoriously un musical and was less then empathetic. All this caused Rachmaninoff to slide into a serious mental depression. He developed an aversion to writing music. He went to see a hypnotist Dr. Dahl who treated Rachmaninoff for an extended period of time until the writer’s block was broken and the results was the great Piano Concerto # 2 in C sharp Minor in 1901 one of the most famous concerted works ever (it sounds like a corny 1940’s movie, but it is true).
Rachmaninoff married cousin Natalie Satina and lived in Switzerland for a period of time while performing all over Europe. Besides being perhaps the greatest pianist of his generation he was also developing a distinguished career as an opera conductor at Moscow’s Bolshoi Opera when he returned to Russia. In 1903 he wrote his Ten Preludes op.23 his famous Second Symphony in E Minor premiered in 1908 took two years to write. Two additional short operas were written The Miserly Knight and Francesca di Rimini. For an upcoming American tour he composed his long and hugely difficult to play Piano Concerto # 3 in D Minor ( that gained household name status when it became the centerpiece of the 1997 film Shine).His American tour was a huge success he formed lifelong friendships with his American pianistic rivals Josef Hoffman and Leopold Godowsky. He was offered the position of Conductor of the Boston Symphony I n 1910 but declined it. During this period he composed his second set of Preludes op. op. 32, his Etudes Tableaux and his two immensely difficult Piano Sonatas. Rachmaninoff during this period composed his superb tone poem Isle of the Dead the cantata The Bells with a text by Edger Allen Poe and the choral work Liturgy of St. John Christendom in the Russian Orthodox tradition for male voices (he was in 1915 to write an even finer work in the same style All Night Vigil).
Rachmaninoff life and career was severely disrupted by the 1917/ 1918 Bolshevik revolution: Rachmaninoff was part of the landed gentry and was also a deeply conservative man; he had felt he had no other choice then to emigrate. He initially lived in Scandinavia but after a few years decided to live partly in America and Switzerland. He was financially wiped out by the Revolution. Though he hated touring he started major tours in Europe and America in order to regain his financial status. He also agreed to make a series of recordings of his shorter works for Victor, encores and transcriptions in the early 1920’s using the acoustic recording horn used prior to electrical recordings with microphone. Even though these recordings have a limited dynamic range a good deal of the magic of his playing comes through. One of the tragic effects of emigration and the need to tour was a drastic decrease of Rachmaninoff’s work as a composer. There was a twofold reason; he was cut off from his country secondly he was totally out of sympathy with modern trends in music.
In the late 1920’s he wrote a fine Fourth Piano Concerto but it never became as famous as his Second or Third. He was to have a much greater success with another concerted work Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini of 1934 with its deeply nostalgic Eighteenth Variation. Rachmaninoff was to continue his recording career with Victor and made famous records of Chopin, Schumann and a series of Violin Sonatas with the great Fritz Kreisler.He was to establish a long term relationship with the Philadelphia Orchestra when he recorded Isle of the Dead as conductor and his celebrated collaboration with Stokowski when they recorded the Second Piano Concerto and the Paganini Rhapsody.
Rachmaninoff wrote a Third Symphony in 1936 which in its way is even a finer work then the Second Symphony but doesn’t have the big soaring melodies that the earlier work has. He rounded out his compositional career with sardonic Symphonic Dances in 1940 that was dedicated to the Philadelphia Orchestra and its new conductor Eugene Ormandy (He made a recording of the Third Symphony as conductor and was soloist in recordings of the First, Third and Fourth Piano Concertos recording with Ormandy all with the Philadelphia Orchestra). He was to develop a close friendship with the young Vladimir Horowitz when he was astounded by the young man’s performance of the Third Concerto. He was saddened by the death of his friend the legendary Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin who often performed his many beautiful songs. With war looming in Europe he moved permanently to the United States and bought a house In Beverly Hills. Though a ‘White Russian’ who was very anti- communist he was deeply disturbed by the German invasion of Russia and contributed to Russian War Relief. Rachmaninoff continued to perform till his seventieth year. He Became ill while on tour and a terminal melanoma was diagnosed as was the custom at the time he was not informed and performed his last concert at Knoxville Tennessee too ill to continue with the tour he went home to California and died on March 28th a few days before his seventieth birthday.
Rachmaninoff for a long period went through a period of critical disdain. While enormously popular with the casual classical music lover his work was considered little more than high class mood music by many music critics and intellectuals. A counter movement was started mostly in England lead by Andre Previn and pianist conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy along with sympathetic critical re evaluation. Recordings from Russia explored his lesser known music particularly his choral works. His superb songs were recorded in complete editions. Yes, the music is derivative of Tchaikovsky but it has a unique voice. When discussing Rachmaninoff one needs to remember that as a very great pianist, a superb conductor and a major composer he may have been the most complete musician of his time. Rachmaninoff was very tall with a solemn face and closely cropped hair (Stravinsky referred to him as six and a half foot scowl) whose sense of dignity made him attractive even to those who were less than enthusiastic about his music. A minor master but a master none the less.
