Rachmaninoff, Sergei Vassilievich << rahk MAH nuh `nawf,` sehr GAY vahs SEE lyuh vihch >> (1873-1943), was a Russian composer and conductor and one of the greatest pianists in history. His compositions generally carry the late romantic style of Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky into the early 1900’s. Even Rachmaninoff’s last works from the 1930’s are hardly affected by modern trends. His music is strongly influenced by the chants and church bells of the Russian Orthodox Church. These musical influences appear in Rachmaninoff’s severely simple melodies and rich, full keyboard sounds. Rachmaninoff combined these native Russian materials with his own passion and intensity of expression.
Rachmaninoff gained his greatest international reputation for his piano compositions. His most famous work is the Prelude in C-sharp minor for piano. He composed it in 1892, at the age of 19. The second (1901) of his four piano concertos shows the melancholy lyricism of his mature style and his skillful writing of virtuoso piano compositions. His other work for piano and orchestra is the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934).
Rachmaninoff’s major works for orchestra are his three symphonies (1897, 1908, and 1936), the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead (1909), and Symphonic Dances (1941), and the choral symphony The Bells (1913). The composer based The Bells on a Russian translation of the poem by the American author Edgar Allan Poe.
Rachmaninoff’s main works for solo piano appear in the collections Moments musicaux (1896), two sets of Preludes (1903, 1910), and two sets of Etudes-tableaux (1911, 1917). He also wrote more than 80 songs, all to Russian texts, for solo voice and piano accompaniment. Rachmaninoff composed three operas, but none are widely performed today.
Rachmaninoff was born on April 1, 1873, on his family estate near Velikiy Novgorod. In 1885, he entered the Moscow Conservatory to study piano and also to begin courses in composition, orchestration, and counterpoint. Rachmaninoff completed his piano studies at the conservatory in 1891. He graduated in composition the next year, winning the conservatory’s highest award for his one-act opera Aleko.
In 1902, Rachmaninoff married his cousin Natalya Satina. He was conductor of the Bolshoi Opera in Moscow from 1904 to 1906 and made his first tour of the United States in 1909 as a pianist and conductor. Rachmaninoff left Russia with his wife and two daughters in 1917 and never returned. Eventually, he settled in the United States late in 1918.
In America, Rachmaninoff concentrated primarily on concert performances rather than composing. He gained enormous popularity with American and European audiences both for his compositions and as a piano soloist. He lived in Switzerland for much of the 1930’s but returned to the United States in the late 1930’s. He died on March 28, 1943, in the United States shortly after he received his American citizenship.
