Sergei Rachmaninoff
(1873–1943)
Who Was
Sergei Rachmaninoff?
A Brief Introduction
Sergei Rachmaninoff was a master of melody—glorious melody that sounds the way emotions feel. When his music is slow, it invites us into states—dreamy, somber, amorous. When fast, the effect is exhilarating. To work within long spans of music, however, melody needs to be developed, guided, and supported. It requires compositional skills Rachmaninoff had in abundance, as much as the ability to come up with great tunes.
Besides being one of the foremost composers of his time, Rachmaninoff was also a formidable pianist, gifted with large hands that matched his tall stature. He wrote for himself a series of important solo piano works, as well as four piano concertos—five, if we count the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934). Otherwise, it is his orchestral works that shine brightest, his operas and songs being much less known.
Early Years: Start and Setback
Born into an upper-middle-class family of diminished resources, Rachmaninoff studied at the Moscow Conservatory with the great piano teacher Nikolay Zverev. The composer Alexander Scriabin was a classmate. Rachmaninoff also took composition classes, and by the time he graduated—in 1892, at the age of 19—he had written his First Piano Concerto (1890–91) and played its first movement in public.
Further successes quickly followed: the immediately popular Prelude in C-sharp minor for piano, written a few months after his graduation; the one-act opera Aleko, staged at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1893; and, also in 1893, the Trio élégiaque No. 2, a piano trio composed in memory of Tchaikovsky, who had died that same year. However, the premiere of his First Symphony (1895) in 1897 was a disaster, and though the blame seems to have lain with its conductor, Alexander Glazunov, Rachmaninoff’s confidence was broken. He wrote nothing the following year, and only a song and a couple of piano pieces the year after that.
Rachmaninoff: Trio élégiaque in G minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello
Middle Period: Recovery and Triumph
In 1900 Rachmaninoff underwent a course of psychiatric treatment, and, very soon afterward, he was composing again on a large scale. His Second Suite for two pianos, Cello Sonata, and Second Piano Concerto all emerged in 1900–01. The success of the concerto, which he premiered as soloist in Moscow in November 1901, fully restored his belief in himself. The next year he married his cousin Natalya Satina. They had two daughters, and though Natalya’s family estate of Ivanovka was a regular base, they traveled extensively as a family, spending time in Dresden and Rome.
Rachmaninoff: Suite No. 2 in C minor for Two Pianos, Op. 17
The flurry of compositional work continued with the Variations on a Theme of Chopin for piano in 1902–3, followed by two more one-act operas—Francesca da Rimini (1900–05) and The Miserly Knight (1903–05)—that he brought to the Bolshoi in 1906 as the company’s regular conductor. He considered other opera projects but turned instead to orchestral scores (including his grand, passionate Second Symphony, 1906–08) and more piano music. In 1909 he made his first US tour, during which he gave the first performance of his Third Piano Concerto (1909) in New York, again with immediate success. The following years were devoted to concert tours in Europe and composition at Ivanovka, including work on two large settings for the Russian Orthodox Church—the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (1910) and All-Night Vigil (1915)—the choral symphony The Bells (1913), and two volumes for solo piano, Études-Tableaux (1916–17).
Late Period: Silence and Return
Everything changed in 1917. Rachmaninoff and his family left Russia soon after the Bolshevik Revolution and made stops in Scandinavia before reaching New York City in November 1918. There, Rachmaninoff abandoned composition, at least partly so that he could support his family as a concert pianist. Famed for the music he was no longer writing, he traveled widely in the US, primarily performing his own works, but also those of Chopin and Liszt. Meanwhile, at home, he and his family continued to live as they had at Ivanovka, with Russian meals served to them by their Russian servants.
Famed for the music he was no longer writing, he traveled widely in the US, primarily performing his own works.
In 1926, Rachmaninoff returned to composition and produced his Fourth Piano Concerto, which was badly received. Though later revised, the concerto continues to be overshadowed by its immediate predecessors, and the setback surely contributed to a further five-year creative silence. Then came a string of late masterpieces, which he composed either during summers in the US or at his villa in Switzerland: the Variations on a Theme of Corelli for solo piano (1931), Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra, the Third Symphony (1935–36), and Symphonic Dances (1940). The last three works, written for US orchestras, brought a new outwardness and luster to his style.
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances for Two Pianos, Op. 45
Legacy
Maintaining the Russian Romantic tradition into the 1940s, Rachmaninoff proved that 19th-century aesthetics could survive modernism. In Russia, as an escapee from the Soviet regime, he was officially ignored for decades. Elsewhere, he appeared much more an end than a beginning.
Watching and Listening
Rachmaninoff wrote only three important chamber works. The earliest is the Trio élégiaque in G minor for piano trio, which he wrote in 1892 at the age of 18: a powerful, single movement of melancholy and rage, with moments of exquisite relief. Curiously, Rachmaninoff composed a second piece with the same title and instrumentation less than two years later: his Trio élégiaque in D minor, in three long movements, written as a memorial to Tchaikovsky . The third piece is the grand, bold, songful Cello Sonata in G minor—one of the products of Rachmaninoff’s return to self-confidence in 1900–01.
Though Rachmaninoff wrote no string quartets as an adult, he did compose Two Movements (1889–90) for string quartet when he was in his mid-teens. Chamber arrangements of choral and orchestral works take us further into his chamber music output: “Lord, Now Lettest Thou Thy Servant Depart in Peace” for twelve cellos, from the All-Night Vigil; and the composer’s final work, Symphonic Dances, written for the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1940.
