Sergei Rachmaninoff grew up in a musical family, middle-class but under strained economic conditions. His ne’er-do-well father squandered the family’s fortune to the point that his parents eventually separated. His mother had to sell what remained of the family’s assets and move into a small apartment in St. Petersburg. Sergei – whose care in better times would have been left to the supervision of a nanny – consequently grew up with little supervision at all. His schooling suffered as a result.

At age nine he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory to study piano, but the administration threatened to expel him for cutting class. He subsequently transferred to the Moscow Conservatory where his initial attempts at composing were discouraged by his mentor, Nikolay Zverev, in whose home he lived for a while. Nevertheless, he continued to march to his own drummer, defying his teacher and transferring to classes in counterpoint and composition. By age 19 he was already established as a performer, but he always wanted to compose and considered himself a composer first, pianist second. He gained instant fame as a composer with his Prelude in C-sharp minor, a work that haunted him all his life because audiences always expected (or demanded) it as an encore at his performances.

Following the success of his Second Piano Concerto in 1901, Rachmaninoff’s career took off and evolved successfully in three directions. He continued to compose, he traveled extensively both at home and in Western Europe as a virtuoso pianist, and he was a sought-after conductor. He tried to apportion his time evenly among the three.

But this idyllic life changed drastically in 1917 with the Russian Revolution. A conservative and traditionalist in politics as in art, Rachmaninoff viewed the Revolution with horror and left the country with his family. When his property in Russia was confiscated and his sources of income dried up, he realized that in order to provide for his family he had to become a full-time pianist, since it was in this capacity that he was best known in the West. These economic constraints consumed him, leaving him little time to compose. In a 1933 interview, he said, “For 17 years, since I lost my country, I have felt unable to compose. When I was on my farm in Russia during the summers, I had joy in my work. Certainly, I still write music – but it does not mean the same to me now.” 

After leaving Russia, Rachmaninoff and his family divided their time between Beverly Hills and Switzerland. With the imminence of war in Europe in 1939, he relocated with his family permanently to Beverly Hills.

Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
Wordpros@mindspring.com
www.wordprosmusic.com