Sergueï Rachmaninov

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born on 1 April 1873 (20 March by the old Russian calendar) on the family estate of Semyonovo near Novgorod, into a family of landed gentry. His father, a spendthrift officer, squandered the family fortune and the estates had to be sold. In 1882 the ruined family moved to St Petersburg and the parents separated. Sergei, who had started piano with his mother, entered the St Petersburg Conservatory but, working little, failed his exams.

In 1885, on the advice of his cousin, the pianist Alexander Siloti, a pupil of Liszt, he was sent to Moscow to board with Nikolai Zverev, a very strict teacher who housed several boys and imposed iron discipline on them: up at six, three hours of piano a day, concerts and cultural outings. Rachmaninoff made astonishing progress there. He entered the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers were Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev and his classmate Alexander Scriabin. He deeply admired Tchaikovsky, who encouraged him.

In 1892 he won the Conservatory’s Great Gold Medal for his opera Aleko, written in seventeen days. That same year he composed the Prelude in C sharp minor, which became so famous at once that audiences demanded it at every concert, until he came to call it, wearily, “the Prelude”. But in 1897 the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 in St Petersburg was a disaster: the conductor, Alexander Glazunov, perhaps drunk, conducted it very badly, and the critics were cruel. Rachmaninoff sank into deep depression and composed almost nothing for three years.

In 1900 he consulted Dr Nikolai Dahl, a physician who practised hypnosis and was also an amateur musician. Over several months Dahl helped him regain his self-confidence. Rachmaninoff then composed his Piano Concerto No. 2, premiered in 1901, which he dedicated to his doctor. It was a triumph: the concerto, with its great passionate melodies, became one of the best-loved in the repertoire. In 1902 he married his cousin Natalia Satina, with whom he had two daughters.

Rachmaninoff now pursued a triple career as composer, pianist and conductor. He conducted at the Bolshoi from 1904 to 1906, then settled for a time in Dresden to compose in peace. In 1909 he composed the Concerto No. 3 for his first tour of the United States, a work of fearsome difficulty that pianists nickname the “Rach 3”. He also wrote the Symphony No. 2, The Isle of the Dead, the famous Vocalise (1915), a song without words, and the Vespers (1915), a masterpiece of Orthodox choral music.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 upended his life: his estate at Ivanovka was confiscated. In December 1917 he left Russia with his family on the pretext of a Scandinavian tour. He never returned. To support his family he devoted himself almost entirely to his career as a pianist and settled in the United States in 1918. He became one of the most famous pianists in the world, admired for his prodigious technique, his huge hands — he could span a thirteenth on the keyboard — and the nobility of his playing. He made many recordings.

Far from Russia he composed little, but his last works are masterpieces: the Concerto No. 4 (1926), the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934), whose eighteenth variation, a romantic melody drawn from the theme turned upside down, became famous, the Symphony No. 3 (1936) and the Symphonic Dances (1940), his last work. He spent his summers at his villa Senar on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, then during the Second World War settled in California. Suffering from cancer, he died in Beverly Hills on 28 March 1943, a few days before his seventieth birthday.