Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who forged an individual voice by synthesizing principles associated with the St Petersburg and Moscow compositional schools. He became famous early as a virtuoso performer and creator, yet his career also included periods of artistic crisis and a long life in emigration.

He was born on 1 April 1873 (20 March Old Style) at the Semyonovo estate in Novgorod Governorate of the Russian Empire. His family was of the nobility: his father, Vasily Arkadyevich Rachmaninoff, was musically gifted though an amateur, and his paternal grandfather Arkady Alexandrovich was a musician who had studied piano with John Field and performed in Tambov, Moscow, and St Petersburg. Rachmaninoff’s first piano lessons came from his mother, Lyubov Petrovna Butakova, and later from the teacher A. D. Ornatsskaya.

In 1882 he entered the junior division of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, but his progress there was poor, and in 1885 the family moved him to Moscow to live in the private boarding house of the strict pedagogue Nikolai Zverev, while continuing studies at the Moscow Conservatory. The regimen included long daily practice, obligatory opera attendance, and ensemble playing. During these years he met Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and in 1886 he visited Crimea for the first time, composing his first nocturne there. After a later quarrel with Zverev, he left the boarding house but remained in Moscow with relatives, the Satins; he later married Natalya Alexandrovna Satina, a pianist and his cousin on his father’s side.

From 1888 he studied piano with Alexander Ziloti and then composition with Sergei Taneyev and Anton Arensky. At nineteen he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory with a Great Gold Medal as both pianist and composer. While still a student he wrote works that brought him wide recognition, including the First Piano Concerto, songs, piano pieces, and the famous Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2 from Morceaux de fantaisie. His graduation work, the opera Aleko (after Pushkin’s The Gypsies), was praised by Tchaikovsky and staged at the Bolshoi Theatre.

To earn money he taught at several Moscow institutions and gave private lessons, which he disliked. At twenty-four he was invited by Savva Mamontov to serve as second conductor of the Moscow Private Russian Opera for one season, where he gained renown as a conductor and became friends with Fyodor Chaliapin. He soon left to focus on composition, but a major setback followed: the premiere of his First Symphony in St Petersburg on 15 March 1897 was a disastrous failure, blamed on weak conducting and on audiences’ incomprehension of the music’s novelty, leading to harsh reviews and a severe depression.

Between 1897 and 1901 he composed almost nothing, recovering only with the help of the physician-hypnotist Nikolai Dahl. In 1901 he completed the Second Piano Concerto, which marked both his return from the crisis and the beginning of a mature creative period. He accepted a conducting post at the Bolshoi Theatre and for two seasons led the Russian operatic repertoire, while also appearing as pianist and conductor with Moscow musical societies. In 1906 he left the Bolshoi, traveled to Italy, and then lived for three productive years in Dresden; in 1909 he toured the United States and Canada as pianist and conductor and wrote the Third Piano Concerto the same year.

Before the Revolution he composed and performed frequently in Moscow, often conducting concerts organized by Ziloti, and he headed the artistic council of the Russian Music Publishing House. His last concert appearance in Petrograd took place on 21 February 1917. After the October Revolution he accepted an invitation to perform in Stockholm and, at the end of 1917, left Russia with his wife and two daughters, Irina and Tatyana, nearly without means, traveling via Malmö to Copenhagen. On 15 February 1918 he performed his Second Concerto in Copenhagen under Georg Høeberg; realizing that composition was difficult under the circumstances, he rebuilt his livelihood through intensive piano practice and heavy concertizing.

On 1 November 1918 he sailed with his family to New York, beginning an intense American career as a pianist that continued until his death, with dozens of concerts each season. He disliked publicity but attracted constant media attention, even sometimes living in a private railway car to avoid crowds while touring. In 1925 he lived in Paris and founded the private publishing house Tair (named from the initials of his daughters), which lasted until early 1935. A further creative lull meant that until 1926 he produced no major new works; he largely kept to Russian émigré circles, maintaining a distinctly Russian household and social environment, with few foreign friends (one noted exception being Frederick Steinway of Steinway & Sons).

New compositions reappeared in 1926–1927, including the Fourth Piano Concerto and Three Russian Songs. During his life abroad (1918–1943) he wrote only six works, which the article describes as among the peaks of Russian and world music. While based mainly in the United States, from 1930 to 1940 he spent much time in Switzerland, where he built the villa “Senar” overlooking Lake Lucerne and Mount Pilatus, and he toured widely in Europe, including appearances at the Lucerne Festival. He was recognized as one of the greatest pianists of his era and a major conductor, though he conducted relatively rarely.

In 1941 he completed his last work, Symphonic Dances, often regarded as his greatest and described as his own favorite. Though hostile to Soviet power and nostalgic for pre-revolutionary Russia, he was deeply affected by Germany’s attack on the USSR. During World War II he gave concerts in the United States and anonymously directed proceeds to the Red Army, encouraging other émigrés to contribute; it is reported that funds from him helped pay for a military aircraft. Accounts also claim he visited the Soviet embassy and considered returning to Russia shortly before his death.

Rachmaninoff was a heavy smoker and later developed cancer (melanoma), which he did not suspect. His final concert took place on 17 February 1943 in Knoxville, about six weeks before he died on 28 March 1943 in Beverly Hills, California, three days short of his seventieth birthday. He was buried at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York; according to his widow, a zinc-lined coffin was chosen in case the remains might one day be moved to Russia, though in 2015 a great-granddaughter stated the family did not intend to relocate them.

Memoirs of friends portray him as truthful, modest, punctual, and meticulously orderly. He planned his work schedules far in advance and suffered greatly when plans were disrupted, and he was prone to depressive moods and hypochondria, alternating with periods of restrained cheerfulness and humor. He usually composed in the morning, avoided working at night, and, despite being a legendary pianist, practiced relatively little because technical mastery came easily; at home he liked to play quietly and listen closely to the sound. Friends were repeatedly astonished by his extraordinary musical memory, by which he could retain large symphonic works after hearing them only once or twice.

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