Sergey Rachmaninov’s grandfather studied piano with John Field, and his father was also an accomplished pianist. However, although Rachmaninov came from a well-to-do family, his father squandered much of the family money. The boy had his first piano lessons from his mother when he was about four years of age at Oneg, the one remaining family estate. He then studied with Anna Ornatskaya who had studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory; and when the family had to sell the estate at Oneg and move to St Petersburg, Rachmaninov studied at the Conservatory himself with Vladimir Demyansky. Family difficulties led to the separation of Rachmaninov’s parents, and the discord at home contributed to him failing his examinations at the age of twelve. Rachmaninov’s cousin, Alexander Siloti (1863–1945), arranged for him to go to the Moscow Conservatory to study with Nikolai Zverev, a renowned disciplinarian. In fact, Rachmaninov and two other boys lived with Zverev under a strict regime of rigorous practice. However, in this environment the young Rachmaninov met and heard the greatest musicians of the time including Anton Rubinstein, Anton Arensky, Sergei Taneyev and Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

At the age of fifteen, Rachmaninov began piano studies with Siloti, and also took harmony with Arensky and counterpoint with Taneyev. In 1890 Rachmaninov spent the summer at Ivanovka, the home of his relatives the Satins. The following year Siloti resigned from the Moscow Conservatory, and rather than have a new teacher for his final year, Rachmaninov was allowed to take his final piano exams a year early. During the next year he worked towards his final exams in composition for which he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Conservatory.

The 1890s were spent in composition and conducting, with Rachmaninov making his London debut as a conductor in 1899, although he also played his by now famous Prelude in C sharp minor and Elegie from Op. 3 as well. It was in November 1901 that he gave the first performance of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor Op. 18. Rachmaninov conducted at the Bolshoi Opera for two seasons beginning in 1904, but the political situation in Russia was already becoming difficult; he and his wife Natalia Satin (also his first cousin), spent some time in Dresden, where Rachmaninov continued to compose.

In 1909 Rachmaninov toured America playing his newly written Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor Op. 30. The years up to World War I were taken up with touring, performing and composing, and in 1914 Rachmaninov toured southern Russia with Serge Koussevitzky giving concerts for the war effort. However at the end of 1917 Rachmaninov received an invitation to perform in Stockholm and he took his wife and two daughters with him, never to return to his homeland. Having left all his possessions in Russia, Rachmaninov decided that he would have to support his family by performing on the piano. Approaches to London were not received favourably, so although he had hated his previous experience of America, Rachmaninov decided that his best chances of success were in the New World. In four months at the end of 1918 he gave forty concerts there and within the next three years had bought a house in New York and signed a contract with Victor Records. For the next twenty-five years of his life he toured America each year for six months, performed in Europe for one month, and spent five months composing and resting, spending winters in New York and summers in Europe.

In 1927 Rachmaninov completed and performed his Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor Op. 40 and in 1931 wrote his last work for solo piano, the Variations on a theme of Corelli Op. 42. Although since arriving in the United States Rachmaninov had toured every year, by 1942 he was too old and frail to continue. On tour in January 1943 he was obviously unwell and the following month gave his last concert in Knoxville, after which the family returned to Los Angeles. Cancer was diagnosed, and Rachmaninov died at the end of March.

As a pianist, Rachmaninov was uncompromising. At the age of forty-five, when he decided to earn his living as a virtuoso, he had to learn a large amount of repertoire since up to that point he had generally only performed his own works in public. His practice sessions were strictly disciplined as was his approach to the music he was learning. Understanding of the structure and the discovery of the ‘culminating point’ of a work were all-important to Rachmaninov. Once planned and studied, his interpretations rarely altered; he had little room for spontaneity or creativity on the concert stage. He certainly possessed an exemplary technique that could accommodate anything he wished to do at the keyboard.

Rachmaninov made a few recordings for Edison in 1919, but from that same year until his death in 1943, he recorded for Victor. Recordings of his own compositions, particularly the works for piano and orchestra, are milestones in the history of recording, but it is also interesting to hear Rachmaninov in works from his performing repertoire that extended from Daquin to Debussy. Highlights include Liszt’s Gnomenreigen, Tausig’s arrangement of Johann Strauss’s Man lebt nur einmal, and Rachmaninov’s own transcriptions of the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Kreisler’s Liebesfreud and Liebeslied. The former was recorded for the second time in February 1942, a year before Rachmaninov’s death. Also from this month comes a glorious performance of Schubert’s Serenade (a performance very close to that of Horowitz, also recorded at the end of his life). Although his recordings of major works such as Schumann’s Carnaval Op. 9 and Chopin’s Piano Sonata in B flat minor Op. 35 have been rightly praised, in these and particularly Beethoven’s Variations in C minor Rachmaninov’s dour and grim persona can sometimes appear.

Fortunately, in 1940 RCA/Victor had Rachmaninov record some of his lesser-known solo music including the Oriental Sketch, Moment Musical Op. 16 No. 2, Humoresque Op. 10 No. 5, Melodie Op. 3 No. 3, some preludes and some etudes-tableaux. They were made at the end of his life when he was approaching seventy years of age and are the only recordings he made on the West Coast of America. These perhaps are the distillation of Rachmaninov the composer and pianist. With his friend, the violinist Fritz Kreisler, Rachmaninov recorded sonatas by Beethoven, Grieg and Schubert. No live performances of Rachmaninov have survived, with the exception of his playing a duet with his wife at a party. Apparently, when a live performance of his was to be broadcast, he insisted that his commercial discs of the work were broadcast in its place. Rachmaninov’s complete recordings were issued in 1992 by BMG on ten compact discs.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — Jonathan Summers (A–Z of Pianists, Naxos 8.558107–10).