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Sergei Rachmaninov 1873–1943

Sergei Vassilievitch Rachmaninov, at Beverley Hills, California, on March 28. He was born on March 20 (April 1) 1873, in the Novgorod district. At the age of ten he entered the Conservatoire at St. Petersburg. A few years later, when the family moved to Moscow, he entered the Moscow Conservatoire, where he studied the piano under Zvierev and composition under Taneiev and Arensky. At the end of his course he was awarded the Gold Medal, and his one-act opera ‘Aleko,’ written for the final examination, was performed at the Moscow Grand Theatre. Among the compositions of this early period were the first Piano Concerto (now known in a revised version) and the set of Preludes that included the famous C sharp minor. His rapidly growing fame brought him to London in 1899, when he appeared at a Philharmonic concert. Two years later the failure of his first Symphony and other works brought on an attack of mental depression, of which he was cured by treatment. In 1902 he married his cousin Nathalie Satin, and their home in Moscow became a salon at which musicians and artists gathered. For a short time he was director of the opera at the Grand Theatre. In 1906, feeling that his environment was claiming too much of him, he cut adrift from Moscow and went to live in Dresden. Here in seclusion he wrote the works that are viewed as his masterpieces: the second and third Piano Concertos, and the symphonic poem ‘The Isle of the Dead.’ In 1909 he toured in America as pianist and conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra. During the war he remained in Russia; but the Revolution, for which he had no sympathy, again sent him abroad, this time as a permanent exile. From 1917 to his death his home was in America. During this period he made many concert tours in Europe and maintained his world-wide fame and position as one of the few great pianists of the time. By many he was considered the greatest of all. He was always warmly welcomed in England, and it was with the approval of the whole English musical world that he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society in March 1932.

As a composer Rachmaninov is usually put down as a late survivor of the romantic era, for his harmony was of the nineteenth century, and much of his melody was of an emotional cast favoured by the late romantics. His most individual form of expression was a ‘languorous euphony,’ finely and luxuriously deployed. He is often linked with Tchaikovsky. But what the two Russians had in common covered but a small part of Tchaikovsky’s range. Rachmaninov had little contact with the Tchaikovsky of the fourth and fifth Symphonies or the middle movements of the ‘Pathetic.’ For the rest, their likenesses belong to period rather than personality. It is to be noted that Rachmaninov’s success with the larger musical public was limited, among his major works, to the second and third Piano Concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, works in which his outlook as a virtuoso made common cause with his skill in musical contrivance and emotional staging. Detached criticism gives a higher place to the numerous works of more unmixed artistry that he wrote for piano solo under various titles. A recent commentator summed him up in the words: ‘The man is all music.’ The best evidence lies in the variety, fancy and resource displayed in this collection of miniatures. Two of the essentials of piano composition he possessed in a high degree: a subtle harmonic sense, and endless invention of types and patterns and figurations for the pianist’s fingers. Had he possessed a like gift of melodic invention he would have stood among the masters of piano music. It is also to be noted that the works for which Rachmaninov himself professed the greatest regard – the choral setting of E. A. Poe’s ‘The Bells’ and the Vesper Mass – were the furthest removed from the atmosphere and circumstance of the piano concerto. Though Rachmaninov’s songs are highly regarded in some quarters they have never received much recognition in this country, even at the time when Chaliapin was drawing attention to them at every recital. Of his purely orchestral works the most admired are the second Symphony in E minor (first performed in this country under Nikisch in 1910), and the twenty-minute picture of grimness, ‘The Isle of the Dead.’ Neither the third Symphony, introduced by Beecham in 1937, nor the fourth, which was recorded by H.M.V. in 1935, has made any lasting impression. Little has been heard of the fourth Piano Concerto since its production at Berlin in 1931. He wrote two Piano Sonatas, and some chamber works, of which the most admired is the Elegaic Trio written in memory of Tchaikovsky.

Musical Times, April 1943