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Beyond words, beyond painting, music can sometimes conjure a past world so vividly that we can experience an earlier time as strongly as if we had lived through it ourselves. No history books seem necessary; the wordless language serves as a visa that transcends both physical and temporal barriers.
Such is the case with the extraordinary art of Sergei Rachmaninoff. Acclaimed internationally as the greatest pianist of his time, lauded worldwide as composer and conductor, a peripatetic expatriate for twenty-six years, Rachmaninoff in his heart never left nineteenth century Russia. Even in music written as late as 1940, he created for us an unforgettable journey back in time–to the extravagant world of Czarist Russia.
Russia for Rachmaninoff remained frozen as he knew it before he fled with his wife and daughters in 1917–as the Romanov empire of Nicholas and Alexandria, a dynasty of opulence, intrigue, glamour, madness and tragedy. Under the double eagle of the Czar flourished the dark landscape that nourished Rachmaninoff’s soul–so much so that he continued to preserve that dying epoch for decades afterwards, from half a world away.
Born in 1873, Rachmaninoff is the last of the great Romanticists, although he lived well into the time of musical modernism. He is often thought of as the direct successor to Tchaikovsky, sharing his Russian predecessor’s gift for unforgettable melody, melancholy, haunting harmonic invention, deep emotional expression and rich orchestration. The young Sergei had a lonely childhood. His parents divorced and he was shipped, penniless, to live with his piano teacher in Moscow. The happy spark was the proximity of his cousins. They lived southwest of the city in a beautiful country home call Ivanovka, a haven to which Rachmaninoff escaped whenever possible.
His fifty-year career began in 1890, when the seventeen-year-old Moscow Conservatory student composed his first piano concerto, and closed in 1940 with the dark and sumptuous Symphonic Dances, written in New York. Rachmaninoff’s piano teacher, Sergeievich Zverev, recognized his astounding pianistic gifts, but bitterly resented his young prodigy’s growing interest in composing. Rachmaninoff finally had to make a sorrowful separation from Zverev in order to study with the composers Taneyev, Siloti and Arensky, and he continued to struggle all of his life with the balancing of three careers–soloist, composer and conductor. By the time he was 21, Rachmaninoff had graduated with honors as a pianist, been awarded the gold medal for his opera Aleko, had achieved success with his first piano concerto and his famous Prelude in C sharp minor, and had obtained a publisher.
A painful turning point came in 1897 with the composition of his first symphony–an important milestone in the life of any composer. Initially proud of his symphony, Rachmaninoff confided that hearing it was the most agonizing hour of his life. Alexander Glazunov conducted the work while severely hampered by alcohol, and the music became a morass of meaningless noise. Rachmaninoff hid on a staircase, his fists pressed against his ears (so appalling was the cacophony), then fled. “All my hopes and ambitions, all my self-confidence, had been crushed,” he said. Savaged by the critics, Rachmaninoff could not compose for three years. The first symphony was destroyed, sporadic attempts at new works abandoned. Easily subject to depression, Rachmaninoff found himself unable to bear the sight of blank music manuscript paper. He busied himself instead with a new position of principal conductor of the Opera, but grew more and more despondent. At last he turned for psychiatric help to the Moscow physician Dr. Nikolas Dahl. Dr. Dahl was also an excellent amateur musician, and he was particularly interested in helping Rachmaninoff. The doctor’s specialty was hypnosis, and Rachmaninoff began daily treatments in 1900. The goal was to enable him to compose a piano concerto since he had promised the London Philharmonic a new work and had not been able to write a note. Dr. Dahl repeated reassuring phrases to Rachmaninoff while he was under hypnosis. “You will begin to work on your concerto. The work will proceed effortlessly. The concerto will be of excellent quality”–day in, day out throughout the spring. Miraculously the treatment awoke in Rachmaninoff an inner resilience, which by the end of the year brought about the publication of his most beloved piece, the second piano concerto (dedicated in heartfelt appreciation to Dr. Dahl). His Slavic melancholy and pessimism were transformed into music of soaring eloquence, sweeping intensity and somber brilliance.
The period afterwards was one of productivity and success for the composer. He married his Ivanovka cousin Natalya in 1902, and in 1903 welcomed their first daughter, Irina. Active as a composer, conductor and pianist, Rachmaninoff began to be troubled by increasing political unrest. He and his family decided to leave Russia for a while and spent time in Italy, Dresden, and Paris, but returned in 1907 for his wife to give birth to a second daughter, Tatyana. In 1909 he made his first tour to America, working with Walter Damrosch and Gustav Mahler in New York. He had such difficulties on tour (including a particularly stormy Atlantic crossing and the necessity of practicing on a cardboard keyboard since there was no piano on board ship) that he vowed never to return. Traveling took up a great deal of his time, but he always returned to his beloved family home at Ivanovka.
But by the end of 1916 Russia was in chaos: the country was immobilized by strikes and successive governments seemed able only to augment the rising discontent with the Czar. The composer recalled the difficult times:
“The outbreak of the Bolshevik upheaval found me in my old flat in Moscow. I was so engrossed with my work that I did not notice what went on around me, not troubling about the rattle of machine guns and rifle shots. But finally, the anarchy, the brutal uprooting of all the foundations of art, the senseless destruction left no hope for a normal life in Russia. I tried in vain to find an escape. Then an entirely unexpected event, which I can only attribute to the grace of God, came to our rescue. Three or four days after the shooting in Moscow had begun, I received a telegram suggesting a concert tour in Scandinavia. This took place in November of 1917. I had difficulty in obtaining a visa from the Bolsheviks, but they finally granted it, wanting to show themselves fairly obliging to artists. Later I heard that I was the last to receive permission to leave Russia. I was aware that I was leaving Moscow, my home, for a very long time.”
In fact, Rachmaninoff never returned. He was forced to leave behind most of his manuscripts and all of his personal fortune. He stayed in Scandinavia for a few months and then, changing his mind about returning to America, decided to make the United States his new home. Without money and possessions, his family depended on a steady income; Rachmaninoff turned to his career as a concert pianist. Arriving in New York, he gratefully accepted the gift of a piano from the Steinway Company, and gave nearly 40 concerts in four months. He signed a recording contract and bought a house, consciously recreating the perfumed atmosphere of Ivanovka, observing all Russian traditions and customs in his home.
While his concertizing career flourished, Rachmaninoff’s compositional life suffered. Music had undergone a revolution during the early twentieth century–composers such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Ives and Webern were inventing a new sonic environment of atonality, dissonance and irregular rhythms. The last of a long line of Romantic virtuoso pianist/composers, Rachmaninoff was a “hybrid”–isolated from composers because, as a superb pianist, he belonged to the world of performers. Other composers, who had embraced the twentieth century musical revolution, rejected Rachmaninoff’s lush nineteenth century sensibilities. He became an anachronism, taking refuge in his formidable career as a pianist, writing very little. In fact, from 1917 (when he fled Russia) to his death in 1943, Rachmaninoff wrote only five major works.
Those Americans who were lucky enough to have seen him remember him as a patrician pianist of indescribable perfection, seemingly without technical limitations and possessed of an amazing poetic lyricism. Aristocratic and melancholy, Rachmaninoff became a musical prince, combining elegant charm with a mystical aloofness that proved unforgettable. Underneath he suffered greatly; the rejection of his compositions as irrelevant pained him deeply. “I try to say simply and directly what is in my heart”, he explained, unable to understand the violent criticism of his music. The new Soviet regime had no use for an expatriate who spoke out publicly against Communism. In 1931 the Soviet government instituted a total boycott of performances of his music, dismissing him as “an insignificant imitator and reactionary, a sworn and active enemy of the Soviet government, a former landowner who represents the decadent attitude of the lower middle-class and is especially dangerous.”
Despite his success as a pianist in America, Rachmaninoff lived in a self-imposed exile. He became an American citizen only in the year of his death, as if finally accepting that he would never return to Russia. Brooding and fatalistic, he said, “I am burdened with a harvest of sorrow.” His heart longed always for his Ivanovka (which had been destroyed by the Bolsheviks). He yearned for the impossible day when he might go home to a Russia restored to the Czarist empire. Carrying on the tradition of Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff created a sonorous musical world that always spoke eloquently and expressively of his love for his homeland. It is interesting that while his numerous modernist detractors are hardly remembered today, Rachmaninoff’s music speaks to audiences with compelling power, rich nostalgia, dazzling virtuosity, and overwhelming passion. With a dark-hued beauty, grave nobility and tender melancholy, Rachmaninoff has painted for us the bittersweet soundscape of Czarist Russia, as it lived, cherished and preserved, in the garden of his heart’s memory.
Several years ago I was walking through a quiet country cemetery near the small village where I lived in Westchester, New York. I came upon a grassy triangle–simple, unpretentious and well kept. To my astonishment I discovered it was the grave of Rachmaninoff, his wife, and daughter, Irina–a final resting place as far away from Russia as one could imagine. Even upon his death his restless heart could not return home–or perhaps it has.
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