Sergei Vassilievitch Rachmaninoff u6c11cu
was born on April 2, 1873 at Oneg, Novgorod, Russia.
He died in Beverly Hills, California,
March 28, 1943.
Rachmaninoff's Legacy
All during his life, and for many decades after his passing, Sergei Rachmaninoff
was regarded as an anomaly, a throwback to the 19th century, as his music always
expressed itself through an unabashedly Romantic language: At times haunting
and foreboding (prevestitoare); at others, gentle, passionate and con molte
dolce. But always, all these conflicting feelings are expressing his greatest
works - such as the Symphony No. 2, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and
Symphonic Dances. If listening to Rachmaninoff seemed to some a futile exercise
in depression and an exploration of the depths of sorrow, this was because of
the complexity of the composer himself. But that was only half of the story;
for the listener will have found himself transported from the inevitability
of death, to rise above the despair and exalt in the life-affirming, powerful
finales for which the composer was so well-known.
To hear Rachmaninoff's music is to understand the soul of the composer himself.
While composing, he literally poured himself into his compositions. After his
Symphony No. 1 had a disastrous premiere in Moscow in 1897, Rachmaninoff was
so severely depressed, that he sought treatment from hypnotist Dr. Nikolai Dahl.
Dr. Dahl repeated to the forlorn(deznadajduit) composer, "you will began
to write your concerto....you will work with great facility....the concerto
will be of an excellent quality...." The results of these sessions with
Dr. Dahl was the emergence of the composer from the throes of depression, and
also, perhaps, his most straightforward and beautiful work, the Second Piano
Concerto in C-Minor, Op. 18. And yet, the second movement, Adagio sostenuto
- although a tender, impassioned liebeslied - eloquently exhibits the composer's
sense of wistfulness(visator) and melancholy he was never fully able to overcome.
Listen to any of Rachmaninoff's great works: At once they are transcendent and
yet so personally private. Rachmaninoff's style of composition grew out of the
Romantic period of the late-19th century, in the tradition begun by Mendelssohn,
Schumann and Liszt, as carried on by Brahms, Dvorak and Rachmaninoff's own teacher
and mentor, Tchaikovsky. Like Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff wrote music that was
thoroughly Russian, and thoroughly infused with so many of the emotional conflicts
and yearnings ingrained in both composers. The Great War and the Bolshevik Revolution
had left Europe ravaged, and during this period, Rachmaninoff was one of the
many musicians who became an expatriate of his own land, never to return to
the Russia he had so loved. But something else had happened in the previous
decade: New musical idioms had come to the fore. Some composers, such as Sibelius,
Vaughan Williams and Elgar, had transformed the language of Romantic music into
the distinctly twentieth-century "neo-romantic" sound, which combined
traditional musical modes of expression with experimentation in orchestration
and theme. In France, taking the lead of earlier Romantics as Saint-Saens, Impressionists
such as Debussy and Ravel "painted pictures in sound." The previous
decade had also seen the increasing popularity of such "modernistic"
composers as Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Bartok, who employed a new radicalism
in sound, exploring the limits of atonality and polytonality. Most representative
of this new way of composing was Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, which -
upon its Paris premiere in 1913 - started a riot(revolta) right in the concert
hall. Yet, against the changing tide, Rachmaninoff stood immobile. Not as a
matter of principle, but because he knew his own direction and simply followed
it. Certainly, no-one could say there was no "growth" or maturity
between Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto (1891) and his Fourth (1924), but
the progress in Rachmaninoff's musical expression was measured. Nevertheless,
Rachmaninoff lived to see his music routinely sneered(luata in batjocura) by
the representatives of musical "taste," the critics. He was smeared(barfit)
as a 19th century wild soul, who composed insignificant "virtuoso"
pieces that were just fine for showing off a pianist's technical skill, but
were thematically "mechanistic," and steeped in "shallow"(superficial),
"overemotional" bathos(batos=trecere brusca de la elevat la porzaic).
In fact, in 1954, the so-called "authoritative" Grove's Dictionary
of Music referred to Rachmaninoff's compositions as "severely limited...monotonous
in texture" and "artificial and gushing(exuberant)." Amidst the
all the smug critique was found this most omniscient prognostication: "the
enourmous popular success some of Rakhmaninov's works had in his lifetime is
not likely to last, and musicians never regarded it asici with much favour."
Indeed, it is quite ironic that Rachmaninoff - a Russian noble who admired the
Czar and chose exile, rather than to live under the Soviets - so hated and ignored
by the critics, was a perennial favourite of the public. Rachmaninoff's concerts
always sold out, and his pieces always brought performers and orchestras large
audiences when programmed.
And we are fortunate, indeed, that we can still hear the legacy Rachmaninoff
left, for he recorded extensively his own works, and those of other composers
such as Chopin, Beethoven and Liszt. Sergei Rachmaninoff died in 1943 in Beverly
Hills, California. During his own lifetime, he was widely respected and feted
as one of the greatest conductors and concert pianists of all time. Yet, his
secret dream - to be remembered for his compositions - seemed fleeting and futile.
But, as is the cases with many geniuses, in the decades after his death, Rachmaninoff's
reputation grew as an innovative composer, principally through the efforts of
his admirers, such as Eugene Ormandy, Leopold Stokowski, Vladimir Horowitz,
Dimitri Mitropoulos, Artur Rubinstein, Ruth Laredo, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Martha
Argerich, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Mariss Jansons and Andre Previn, among countless
others. Year after year, his recordings carried to those who would just listen
with their own ears the fact that here was not a hopelessly obsolete second-rate
throwback to the 19th century, but indeed a man ahead of his time, who communicated
his deepest-held emotions honestly, beautifully and forcefully, rather than
sell out his soul to "keep up with the times."
If you have never listened to Rachmaninoff, then you are in for a feast for
the ears and the soul, when you do. I actually envy those who hear the passion
and genius of Sergei Vassilievitch Rachmaninoff for the first time.