Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (Russian Music Studies)
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Sergei Rachmaninoff
A Lifetime in Music
Sergei Bertens...)
Sergei Rachmaninoff
A Lifetime in Music
Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda, with the assistance of Sophia Satina
With a new introduction by David Butler Cannata
An indispensable and captivating document, now back in print!
Throughout his career as composer, conductor, and pianist, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) was an intensely private individual. When Bertensson and Leyda’s 1956 biography appeared, it lifted the veil of secrecy from several areas of Rachmaninoff’s life, especially concerning the genesis of his compositions and how their critical reception affected him.
The authors consulted a number of people who knew Rachmaninoff, who worked with him, and who corresponded with him. Even with the availabilty of such sources and full access to the Rachmaninoff Archive at the Library of Congress, Bertensson, Leyda, and were tireless in their pursuit of privately held documents, particularly correspondence. The wonderfully engaging product of their labors masterfully incorporates primary materials into the narrative. Almost half a century after it first appeared, this volume remains essential reading.
Sergei Bertensson, who knew Rachmaninoff, published other works on music and film, often with a documentary emphasis.
Jay Leyda wrote extensively on Russian music and film, as well as on American literature.
David Butler Cannata is Professor of Music at Boyer College of Music, Temple University.
Sophia Satina was Rachmaninoff’s sister-in-law and cousin.
Russian Music Studies―Malcolm Hamrick Brown, founding editor
Sergei Rachmaninoff School of Musicianship and Technique: A Guide for Keyboard Performers
(Based on an article written in 1923 by legendary Russian ...)
Based on an article written in 1923 by legendary Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), this volume presents the series of chords, arpeggios, and scales that Rachmaninoff himself studied as a young man. The Preface contains a short history explaining Rachmaninoff’s use of this exercise and demonstrates that similar studies were included in some of the earliest keyboard methods dating to the eighteenth century. More than finger exercises, these patterns encourage harmonic thinking and reflect the modern approach to piano technique with its emphasis on engaged practice. Having its roots in the earliest history of keyboard pedagogy, and practiced and promoted by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Josef Lhèvinne, Franz Liszt, and other legendary pianists, the exercises in this volume are a true link to the Golden Age of piano performance. Without question, diligent study will greatly improve every dedicated student’s musicianship and technique.
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff was a Russian pianist, composer, and conductor of the late Romantic period.
Background
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff was born on April 2, 1873 on his parents' estate of Oneg, near Novgorod, Russia. His father, Vasili Arkadyevich Rachmaninoff, a well-born army officer, was wealthy, kind, and profligate; his mother, Lubov Petrovna (Butakova) Rachmaninoff, brought more wealth to the family, which her husband soon squandered. After he had lost the several estates he had acquired, the family, its social position lowered, moved in 1882 to a crowded flat in St. Petersburg. Soon afterward the father, by agreement, departed from the family circle. Both parents played the piano, the father's side of the family being especially musical, and Sergei, the second son and third of six children, showed musical talent at an early age.
Education
He attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory (1882 - 85), where he excelled in music and piano but, idle and lazy, was unsuccessful in his other studies. On the advice of his cousin, the distinguished pianist-conductor Alexander Siloti, he was sent to the Moscow Conservatory to study with Nikolai Zverev (1885 - 88), a strict disciplinarian. In 1886 he entered Anton Arensky's harmony class, then studied composition with Sergei Taneyev and piano with Siloti. He composed a scherzo for orchestra in 1887 and wrote numerous piano pieces and songs. He also wrote sketches for an opera, Esmeralda (based on Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris), in 1888, but did not complete it. Rachmaninoff graduated from the Moscow Conservatory as a pianist in 1891 and as a composer in 1892, on the latter occasion receiving the gold medal for his one-act opera Aleko. This was the year, too, in which he composed his famous Prelude in C-sharp Minor, one of the most popular piano pieces ever written.
Career
After conservatory he earned his living as a piano teacher (an occupation he did not enjoy - he never taught after 1918) and continued to compose.
His First Symphony, in D Minor, performed in St. Petersburg on March 15, 1897, was badly played, and its poor reception deeply discouraged him. In 1900 a period of intense depression was cured by Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a Moscow neurologist, to whom Rachmaninoff the following year dedicated his Second Piano Concerto, probably the most popular work of its kind in the twentieth century.
Rachmaninoff next turned to conducting, and in two years at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (1904 - 06) proved to be outstanding. The desire for more time to compose took him to Dresden, Germany, where he chiefly lived from 1906 to 1909.
In the fall of the latter year he made his first trip to the United States.
His American debut was in a recital at Smith College, Northampton, Massachussets, on November 4, 1909; on November 28 he was soloist in the world premiere of his splendid Third Piano Concerto in New York City, with Walter Damrosch conducting. While in America, Rachmaninoff was offered the conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which he declined, as he did when it was offered a second time in 1918.
He returned to Moscow and lived there from 1910 to 1917 (some of that time conducting the Moscow Philharmonic Society Orchestra). The Bolshevik revolution drove him out of his country, and he never saw it again. He now deliberately set out on a career as virtuoso pianist, becoming one of the finest in the history of music.
Long and exhausting tours took him all over America and Europe, where his individualistic playing - both reflective and demoniac - combined with his striking, dour-visaged appearance to make an unforgettable impression. His phonograph recordings, too, both solo and with orchestra, were epoch-making; those unable to hear him in person could (and can) still be amazed by his art. While he pursued this arduous career, his composing was curtailed but never discontinued.
Several large and important works were produced during his self-imposed exile from Russia: the Fourth Piano Concerto (1926), "Variations on a Theme by Corelli", "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini" (piano and orchestra, 1934), Third Symphony (1936), and "Symphonic Dances" (in two versions, for orchestra and for two pianos, 1940).
In 1942 he and his wife settled in California, eventually acquiring a home in Beverly Hills. Here, on Feburary 1, 1943, they both became American citizens, at last officially embraced by a country that had long appreciated the musical wealth they brought to it. Active to the end, Rachmaninoff died at home only a few weeks later, having succumbed to melanoma, a rapid form of cancer. He was buried in Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York.
Although Rachmaninoff found a warm welcome in the United States, he considered himself a loyal subject of the Czar and for years refused to become an American citizen. His dislike of the Soviet regime remained steadfast until 1941, when the German invasion of Russia impelled him to change his position to the extent of supporting Russian relief.
Views
Quotations:
"I am organically incapable of understanding modern music, therefore I cannot possibly like it; just as I cannot like a language, let us say, whose meaning and structure are absolutely foreign to me. "
Personality
Along with his musical gifts, Rachmaninoff possessed physical gifts that may have placed him in good stead as a pianist. These gifts included exceptional height and extremely large hands with a gigantic finger stretch. This and Rachmaninoff's slender frame, long limbs, narrow head, prominent ears, and thin nose suggest that he may have had Marfan syndrome, a hereditary disorder of the connective tissue.
Quotes from others about the person
Arthur Rubinstein wrote: "He had the secret of the golden, living tone which comes from the heart . .. I was always under the spell of his glorious and inimitable tone which could make me forget my uneasiness about his too rapidly fleeting fingers and his exaggerated rubatos. There was always the irresistible sensuous charm, not unlike Kreisler's. "
Connections
In 1888 he met his first cousin Natalia Satina, also a gifted pianist, and they were married on April 29, 1902. They had two daughters, Irina and Tatiana.