Rachmaninov, the Pianist

No. 373 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast373

 =====================================================================

Blogger’s Note: As we review our many musical shares from our musical forum activities under our ongoing “222 Day Binge Challenge”, the Friday Blog and Podcast will revisit some themes from past Tuesday Blogs. Today’s montage is part of that exercise. The Tuesday post in question was issued on January 2nd, 2012. The programme reuses some of the same works and the below commentary is taken almost verbatim from the original post.

 Today’s blog and podcast is dedicated to Sergei Rachmaninov - not as a composer, but as a concert pianist. This is nothing new - Liszt made a fine career as a concertist as well as in composing. Rachmaninov did what he had to do to "feed his family":

Rachmaninov possessed extremely large hands, with which he could easily maneuver through the most complex chordal configurations. As a pianist, Rachmaninov ranked among the finest pianists of his time, along with Leopold Godowsky, Ignaz Friedman, Moriz Rosenthal and Josef Hofmann, and is perhaps one of the greatest pianists in the history of classical music.

The 1917 Russian Revolution meant the end of Russia as Rachmaninov had known it. With this change followed the loss of his estate, his way of life, and his livelihood. On 22 December 1917, he left St. Petersburg for Helsinki with his wife and two daughters (on an open sled!)

He spent a year giving concerts in Scandinavia while also laboring to widen his concert repertoire. Near the end of 1918, he received lucrative American contract offers. Although he declined them all, he decided the United States might offer a solution to his financial concerns.

He departed for New York on 1 November 1918. Once there, Rachmaninov quickly chose an agent, and accepted the gift of a piano from Steinway before playing 40 concerts in a four-month period. At the end of the 1919–20 season, he also signed a contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company.

From the many recordings he left us, works I retained include a few of his won, but also works by Beethoven and Chopin.

Due to his busy concert career, Rachmaninov's output as composer slowed tremendously. Between 1918 and his death in 1943, while living in the U.S. and Europe, he completed only six compositions. The main work in today’s montage is Rachmaninov as soloist on his fourth piano concerto.

 

I think you will (still) love this music too.