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I have created this webring
in an effort to promote my belief that the internet can be the
ultimate media for this type of information. By linking all
of the best web pages on Sergei Rachmaninoff in such a way,
anybody can get reliable information on this man. This
compilation of web pages is indended for use by student surfer,
the college researcher, the fans of Rachmaninoff's music, and
anybody who may be interested in learning about Sergei
Rachmaninoff. This will be an ongoing project and I
sincerely hope it will never be finished. As the media
grows, so will the Rachmaninoff Webring. I dream of the day
when there is a Rachmaninoff discussion group, chat room cd
exchange, all incorporated into this resource. I know what
his music has done and continues to do for me, and I hope that he
can do it for you too!
A webring is a collection of related webpages that are linked
very much like a ring. You can begin at any page in the
ring, and if you follow the links you will experience all of the
pages in the ring and end up where you began. There is a
box or set of links that looks the same on each page. It
has links to go to the next site, the previous site, or back to
this page. If you click on the picture of Rachmaninoff you
will also come back to this page. You can see this
above. Try it out, but don't go far! There's more!
Early Life.
Rachmaninoff was born on an estate belonging to his
grandparents, situated near Lake Ilmen in the Novgorod district.
His father was a retired army officer and his mother the daughter
of a general. The boy was destined to become an army officer
until his father lost the entire family fortune through risky
financial ventures and then deserted the family. Young Sergey's
cousin Aleksandr Siloti, a well-known concert pianist and
conductor, sensed the boy's abilities and suggested sending him
to the noted teacher and pianist Nikolay Zverev in Moscow for his
piano studies. It is to Zverev's strict disciplinarian treatment
of the boy that musical history owes one of the great piano
virtuosos of this century. For his general education and
theoretical subjects in music, Sergey became a pupil at the
Moscow Conservatory.
At the age of 19 he graduated from the conservatory,
winning a gold medal for his one-act opera Aleko (after
Aleksandr Pushkin's poem "The Gypsies"). His fame and
popularity, both as composer and concert pianist, were launched
by two compositions: the Prelude in C Sharp Minor, played
for the first time in public on Sept. 26, 1892, and his Piano
Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, which had its first performance in
Moscow on Oct. 27, 1901. The former piece, although it first
brought Rachmaninoff to public attention, was to haunt him
throughout his life: the prelude was constantly requested by his
concert audiences. The concerto, his first major success, revived
his hopes after a trying period of inactivity.
In his youth, Rachmaninoff's passionate nature was not
sustained by the will and equilibrium he later developed, and he
was subject to emotional crises over the success or failure of
his works as well as in his personal relationships. Self-doubt
and uncertainty carried him into deep depressions, one of the
most severe of which followed the failure, on its first
performance (March 1897), of his Symphony No. 1 in D Minor.
The symphony was poorly performed, and the critics condemned it.
(Ironically, this was the work that, following Rachmaninoff's
death, was acclaimed by many musicologists as his greatest
contribution to symphonic literature as well as his most original
composition.) During this period, also brooding over an unhappy
love affair, he was taken to a psychiatrist, Nikolay Dahl, who is
often credited with having restored the young composer's
self-confidence, thus enabling him to write the Second Piano
Concerto (which is dedicated to Dahl).
The association with Dahl seemed to have an even greater
influence on Rachmaninoff's personal life than on his music:
about this time he married his own cousin Natalie Satin. The
writing of the Second Piano Concerto marked the resumption
of his creative activity, and it was soon followed by a number of
shorter works. The concerto is studded with such melodic themes
that it has become his most popular longer work.
Major creative activity.
At the time of the Russian Revolution of 1905,
Rachmaninoff was a conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre. Although
more of an observer than a person politically involved in the
revolution, he went with his family, in November 1906, to live in
Dresden. There he wrote three of his major scores: the Symphony
No. 2 in E Minor (1907), the symphonic poem The Isle of
the Dead (1909), and the Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor
(1909). The last was composed especially for his first concert
tour of the United States, highlighting his much-acclaimed
pianistic debut on Nov. 28, 1909, with the New York Symphony
under Walter Damrosch. Probably the composer's best unified
longer work, the Third Piano Concerto requires great
virtuosity from the pianist; its last movement is a bravura
section as dazzling as any in the literature. In Philadelphia and
Chicago he appeared with equal success in the role of conductor,
interpreting his own newest symphonic compositions. Of these, the
Second Symphony is the most significant: although it
displays Rachmaninoff's usual propensity for lapsing into
familiar Romantic conventions, it is a work of deep emotion and
haunting thematic material. While touring, he was invited to
become permanent conductor of the Boston Symphony, but he
declined the offer and returned to Russia in February 1910.
It was at that time and during musical feuds in Moscow
between several divisions in the large family of Russian
composers that Rachmaninoff's compositions were clearly
classified and his place in Russian music defined. On the one
hand there were the adherents to the St. Petersburg group of the
"Mighty Five" (Mily Balakirev, Aleksandr Borodin,
César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov), and
on the other there were the more conservative followers of Peter
Ilich Tchaikovsky, Anton Rubinstein, and Sergey Taneyev. Another,
smaller, group was composed of enthusiasts of Aleksandr
Scriabin's music. Of these three factions, Rachmaninoff belonged
unmistakably to the Tchaikovsky group. His lyricism, devoid of
any particular innovation, is especially evident in the large
number of songs he composed, even more than in his piano
compositions.
Rachmaninoff's music, although written mostly in the 20th
century, remains firmly entrenched in the 19th-century musical
idiom. He was, in effect, the final expression of the tradition
embodied by Tchaikovsky--a melodist of Romantic dimensions still
writing in an era of explosive change and experimentation.
The one notable composition of Rachmaninoff's second period
of residence in Moscow was his choral symphony The Bells
(1913), based on Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont's Russian
translation of the poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Although it became a
staple of the symphonic repertory, partly because of its scoring
for chorus and soloists, the work displays considerable ingenuity
in the coupling of choral and orchestral resources to produce
striking imitative and textural effects.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Rachmaninoff went
into his second self-imposed exile--this time taking his family
to the United States, where he made his home for the rest of his
life. For the next 25 years he lived in an English-speaking
country, yet he never mastered its language or thoroughly
acclimatized himself. With his family and a small circle of
friends, he lived a rather isolated life. He missed Russia and
the Russian people--the sounding board for his music, as he said.
And this alienation had a devastating effect on his formerly
prolific creative ability. He produced little of real originality
but rewrote some of his earlier work. Indeed, he devoted himself
almost entirely to concertizing in the United States and Europe,
a field in which he had few peers. His only substantial works
from this period are the Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (1936),
another expression of sombre, Slavic melancholy, and the Rhapsody
on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra (1934), a set
of variations on a Paganini violin caprice. The Rhapsody has
vied with the Second Concerto as the composer's most
often-played work.
Of his compositions, the Second and Third Piano
Concerti, as well as the Rhapsody, still remain in the
concert repertory and may continue to do so. His symphonies, his
vocal works, and his solo piano pieces have declined somewhat in
their appeal, yet the general charm of his work and his unique
performances retain for him an honourable position in the history
of music.
Major Works
MAJOR WORKS. Orchestral works. Symphonies: No. 1
in D Minor, op. 13, 1895; No. 2 in E Minor, op. 27,
1907; No. 3 in A Minor, op. 44, 1936. Piano concerti: No.
1 in F Sharp Minor, op. 1, 1890-91, rev. 1917; No. 2 in C
Minor, op. 18, 1901; No. 3 in D Minor, op. 30, 1909; No.
4 in G Minor, op. 40, 1927. Miscellaneous: The Rock,
op. 7, 1893 (for orchestra); Capriccio on Gypsy Themes,
op. 12, 1894 (for orchestra); The Isle of the Dead, op.
29, 1909 (symphonic poem based on picture of Böcklin); Rhapsody
on a Theme of Paganini, op. 43, 1934 (for piano and
orchestra); Symphonic Dances, op. 45, 1941 (for full
orchestra).
Chamber music.
Trio Elegiaque in D Minor, op. 9, 1893 (for piano,
violin, and cello); Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Minor,
op. 19, 1901.
Piano music.
Solo piano: Five Pieces for Piano, op. 3, 1892
(including the Prelude in C-Sharp Minor), Six Moments
Musicaux, op. 16, 1896; Variations on a Theme of Chopin,
op. 22, 1903; Nine Études-Tableaux, op. 39, 1916-17; Variations
on a Theme of Corelli, op. 42, 19, 32; preludes, études, and
sonatas. Two pianos: Suite No.1, op. 5, 1893; Suite No.
2, op. 17, 1901; Symphonic Dances op. 45, 1943
Vocal music.
Operas: The Miser Knight, op. 24, 1904; Francesca
da Rimini, op. 25, 1904. Songs: Approximately 72 songs
composed between 1893 and 1916. Miscellaneous: Liturgy of St.
John Chrysostomus, op. 31, 1910 (for mixed choir); The
Bells, op. 35, 1913 (choral symphony); Vesper Mass,
op. 37, 1915; Three Russian Folksongs, op. 41, 1928.
Rachmaninoff's letters have been collected and published in
Russian in
Z. Apetianz (ed.), Pisma (1955), which includes all previously
published
letters and some newly published ones. Rachmaninoff's
Recollections,
Told to Oskar von Riesemann, trans. from German (1934, reissued
1979), are reminiscences by the composer about his life and work;
the
last chapter is Riesemann's analysis of Rachmaninoff's qualities
as a
composer. Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda, Sergei Rachmaninoff:
A Lifetime in Music (1956, reissued 1965), is a comprehensive
biography whose preparation was assisted by Sophia Satin, the
composer's cousin and sister-in-law; it is especially useful for
its
description of the composer's years in America. Other important
biographical studies are Watson Lyle, Rachmaninoff: A Biography
(1939, reprinted 1976); John Culshaw, Sergei Rachmaninov (1949,
reissued 1959); Victor I. Seroff, Rachmaninoff (1950, reprinted
1970); Patrick Piggott, Rachmaninov (1978), including detailed
musical
commentary and critique; Barrie Martyn, Rachmaninoff: Composer,
Pianist, Conductor (1990), drawing extensively on archival and
Russian-language sources, with a discography; and Geoffrey
Norris,
Rakhmaninov, rev. and updated ed. (1994). (V.I.S./Ed.)
