2020 04 EXILES Rakhmaninov

Exiles from Revolution Rakhmaninov reclaimed

Sergei Rakhmaninov left Russia in December 1917, soon after the Bolsheviks seized power. He never returned.

In the early Soviet years his music was seen as archaic “not so much the music of yesterday, as sometime last week”. For a while it seemed that Rakhmaninov might simply fade from Soviet memory.

But that didn’t happen. In the 1930s Soviet musical aesthetics changed. Modernism receded into the past. The new style converged with Rakhmaninov… but with a socialist message.

Soviet acceptance of Rakhmaninov was speeded up by his patriotic response to the 1941 Nazi invasion. After his death, in 1943, a process of reclamation began.

In 1944 an early symphony emerged from a Leningrad archive. Suppressed by Rakhmaninov since the 1890s, this gave a radical new perspective on the composer.

Rakhmaninov’s background Sergei Rakhmaninov (1873-1943) was born into an aristocratic family. It was a family with musical pedigree too: his grandfather had been a piano pupil of John Field.

Sergei graduated from Moscow Conservatoire in 1892 only the third person to be awarded the Great Gold Medal. His teachers were Siloti piano. (Siloti was Sergei’s cousin, underlining the family musical pedigree.) Taneyev counter-point. Arensky composition.

Rakhmaninov built an international reputation as a composer, conductor and pianist. He lived in Dresden 1906-09 (in part as an escape from the revolutionary turmoil in Russia, which had started in 1905). He undertook concert tours of USA in 1909, and Britain in 1914. His US tour was as both pianist and conductor.

Revolution The 1917 Revolution had a big impact on Rakhmaninov.

In May 1917 he was confronted by an angry crowd of peasants led by a ‘Bolshevik agitator’ when he visited his estate at Ivanovka. [Mitchell p 143] The estate was taken into communal ownership.

On 1 June 1917 he wrote to Siloti (his former piano teacher) that he desperately wanted to leave Russia with his family. We are “prepared to go to Norway, Denmark, Sweden… anywhere”. [Gehl p 37]

During the October Revolution, the family apartment in Moscow was close to fierce fighting. Rakhmaninov was drafted onto the building committee, and required to join the rota for night guard duty.

An unsolicited invitation for a recital tour of Scandinavia arrived. Rakhmaninov seized the opportunity; on 22 December he and his family left Russia via Finland, and set up temporary home in Copenhagen.

In November 1918 they embarked for New York.

New life in the USA In the USA Rakhmaninov demonstrated astonishing commercial prowess. He knew what to expect – during his 1909 concert tour he had written to his cousin Zoya Pribitkova “All Americans think about is business”. [Gehl p 1]

To fund his new life he re-branded himself as a pianist. He extended his repertoire, starting with Star Spangled Banner.

His concert schedule was amazing. During his twenty four years in the USA he gave 992 concerts in 200 North American cities. In peak concert season he was giving four concerts a week.

By 1920 he had signed recording contracts with Victor and RCA. He also signed up with Ampico (American Piano Company) to make a series of player piano rolls.

His earnings were enormous, so he was able to indulge himself with fast cars and fast boats.

In 1930 he decided to build a summer residence in Switzerland; Villa Senar at Hertenstein by Lake Lucerne – a substitute for his lost estate at Ivanovka.

Rakhmaninov also became well known for his generosity towards other émigrés, and for sending money and food parcels to friends who remained in Russia.

Piano roll sample Here is one of Rakhmaninov’s Ampico piano rolls from 1928. Élégie op 3 no 1 written in 1892, and often included in his recitals.

LINK 1 (4 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrOp4TeG100 Rakhmaninov Plays Élégie op 3 no 1 Ampico Roll 69253-H 4 Apr 1928

Émigré persona Rakhmaninov adopted an apolitical public persona.

When you take his lifestyle a continuation of wealthy pre-Revolutionary life: Russian clothing, in a Russian household, with a maid who had accompanied the family from Russia.

… add in the sound-world of his music profoundly Russian, inherently nostalgic. (In 1912 when asking poet Marietta Shaginian to select poems for him to set, he had suggested “the mood should be sad rather than gay; bright tones do not come easily to me”.) [Maes p 204]

… there’s a handy canvas for people to project their own feelings about Russia’s fate.

In 1928 a Paris émigré journal featured Rakhmaninov as the “quintessential symbol of Russian cultural unity”.

The next year the same journal carried an article by Lolli Lvov “what does the undying praise and unrivalled success of Rakhmaninov mean for Russia in her current inhuman torments?... Like the music of Orpheus, his music has transformative power to affirm the essence of genuine Russia”. [Journal Russia and Slavism, quoted Mitchell p 140]

Depiction in the USSR In 1937, people in the USSR were given a brief glimpse of Rakhmaninov’s new life as an itinerant recitalist.

Popular Soviet satirists, Ilf and Petrov, toured depression-hit USA, and recounted their experiences in a travel book: Single-storied America / Одноэтажная Америка.

This book included a meeting with Rakhmaninov. First he’s shown telling jokes in the green room while waiting to go on stage. When called to perform he “rises from his seat, assuming the great sorrow of a Russian exile on his face” [Mitchell p 159]

Return to composing For about ten years Rakhmaninov stopped composing, and when he resumed in 1926 he was much less productive.

During his entire career he gave opus numbers to 45 works. 39 of these were written between 1891 and 1916 Only six were written between 1926 and 1940.

However, these final works are significant pieces: Fourth Piano Concerto Three Russian Songs Variations on a theme of Corelli Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini Third Symphony Symphonic Dances

What caused this period of writer’s block? The stress of establishing a new life? An amazingly busy recital schedule?

Rakhmaninov said his “sense of being in exile from his homeland had thwarted his inspiration”. [Interview published in 1934, Monthly Musical Record quoted Mitchell p 143]

First premiere in exile Rakhmaninov’s first western works were premiered together on 18 March 1927 in Philadelphia.

These were Fourth Piano Concerto and Three Russian Songs.

Fourth Piano Concerto received a lukewarm reception. Composition of a first draft was apparently well advanced before the revolution, but with the upheaval it laid dormant until 1926. Rakhmaninov attempted dramatic make-overs in 1928 and 1941, but in the West this concerto has never approached the popularity of its two immediate predecessors.

Three Russian Songs, however, was well-received.

LISTENING NOTES: Rakhmaninov Three Russian Songs op 41

First performance: Philadelphia, 18 March 1927, Philadelphia Orchestra and Toronto Mendelssohn Choir conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The work is dedicated to Stokowski

Here is a summary of each song.

I Через речку, речку быстру…/ Across the stream, the fast stream… A drake and a duck are crossing a bridge over a swift stream. The duck takes fright and flies away. The drake is left weeping.

II Ах ты, Ванька… / Hey Vanka Hey Vanka you hot-headed fool! You are leaving me because of your in-laws. Who am I going to spend the dark winter nights with?

III Белилицы, румяницы, вы мой! / My white cheeks, my blushing cheeks I’m crying because my jealous husband is riding home to whip me. All because I visited a young single neighbour; I gave him a glass of mead. He pressed my hands against the glass and told me I moved like a beautiful swan. My husband wants to beat me and I don’t know why!

LINK 2 (15 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=91Mm6esSUBk Three Russian Songs op 41 State Symphony Capella of Russia, cond Valery Polyansky

Three Russian Songs These are simple folk stories about relationship problems: desertion, loneliness, and at the end there is anticipation of a beating. Perhaps this represents Rakhmaninov’s feelings about the life of an exile?

The musical setting is structurally sophisticated; this is no random sequence of folk tunes. The first song includes a heart-wrenching descending violin gesture (at 2’40 in the recording above) which Rakhmaninov uses again in Third Symphony and Symphonic Dances.

The standard folk version of the first song has a happy ending; the duck returns to the drake. Rakhmaninov omits this happy ending, leaving the drake alone with his tears.

I’ve seen the third song described as “wry”. Perhaps the original folk song can be performed wryly… but this setting sounds menacing to me, interspersed with glimpses of sadness.

I found an analysis by LP Sinyavskaya from Urals Conservatoire, which explains some of the menace Rakhmaninov has introduced in the third song, including: changing the rhythm from 6 / 4 to 2 / 4 (alla marcia!), and progressively curtailing the chorus responses to the storyline from an ornamental Ай люли, ай да, люшеньки ли! to the single syllable А! which in this context means “And?[... so what happened next?]”

Rakhmaninov in the USSR Back in the USSR, Rakhmaninov’s music continued to be performed regularly by both the Leningrad Philharmonic and Moscow Philharmonic.

The inaugural concert of the Moscow Philharmonic (then known as Gosfil) in 1922 included a Rakhmaninov Piano Concerto (…not clear which one), along with Skryabin’s Poem of Ecstasy and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. [MFW MSP p 73]

In 1923, Rakhmaninov’s Fiftieth Birthday was celebrated in Petrograd, with two of his operas: Aleko and The Miserly Knight; and his cantata Spring.

There were no illusions about his music. A leading critic gave this wonderful summary: Rakhmaninov is not even the yesterday of art, he is from some day last week. An interesting day, admittedly, but a mournful one. [Sabaneyev in Kultura i zhizn Feb 22 quoted MFW MSP p 78]

Gradually Rakhmaninov’s music was absorbed into Standard Repertoire. By the mid 1930s Second Symphony and The Isle of the Dead (both written in 1908), and Three Russian Songs and Fourth Piano Concerto (both written in 1926) had become established repertoire pieces.

Rakhmaninov in the USSR… Russian nationalism Thinking about Three Russian Songs… I find it interesting that this work was accepted into the repertoire; it seems to be an émigré’s comment on exile. Perhaps the fact that the texts are genuine folk songs helped?

It is no surprise that Rakhmaninov’s music in general was being accepted. By 1936 the retreat from modernist experimentation was complete in Soviet Music. Socialist Realism had been defined with nineteenth century models as the starting point for good music. And Russian nationalism was mainstream again.

Party ideologues would surely have endorsed this statement by Rakhmaninov: with the exception of a few modernists, all Russian composers deeply absorbed the spirit of Russian folk song… modernist Russian composers are mistaken in abandoning folk music as only national music can provide the basis for truly universal music. [Rakhmaninov inThe Etude magazine 1919, quoted Mitchell p142]

Rakhmaninov in the USSR… religious music However, regulatory changes soon hindered performance of Rakhmaninov’s religious music in the USSR.

In 1926 the State Cappella performed Rakhmaninov’s All-Night Vigil / Vespers (written in 1915). This was mocked in the journal Музыка и Октябрь / Music and October: what is the purpose of the State Cappella? Today – to sing of the Revolution? Tomorrow – the All-Night Vigil? … [The State Cappella+ is doing someone else’s job! There are limits. Pornography (as well as religion) also has its own masterpieces!!! So why the preference? [MFW MSP p 171-2]

Two years later state repertoire rules changed. Concerts of the Orthodox liturgy were banned, and stayed banned for almost fifty years. All-Night Vigil / Vespers could now only be performed as part of a church service; and church services were often seen during the Soviet years as the preserve of the elderly and village idiots.

Here is a revealing diary entry on the 1926 performance of All-Night Vigil / Vespers from Goldenweiser: [Alexander Goldenweiser (1875-1961) professor of piano at Moscow Conservatoire… later member of Stalin Prize Committee] It made an unforgettable impression, especially precious when coarseness, cruelty and the mockery of everything spiritual have triumphed. Art is the highest truth. One cannot lie here; or, one can lie, but then there is no art! And nothing else can help here, which is why ‘Marxist’ art is not forthcoming – and never will be. They fear [religious art] much as the devil fears the cross, and in this they are absolutely right. It is an incomparably infectious force! [MFW MSP p 170]

All-Night Vigil / Vespers This liturgical work adheres to Orthodox a cappella traditions in three chant styles: Znamenny, Greek and Kievan.

It is widely known as Vespers, but this is a misnomer… an All-Night Vigil sequentially presents the services of Vespers, Matins, Lauds and Prime.

Rakhmaninov was inspired by hearing Tchaikovsky’s setting of the Vigil in the mid 1890s. He studied traditional chant with Smolensky (the dedicatee). He produced this work in a matter of weeks in early 1915.

All-Night Vigil / Vespers was hardly known outside Orthodox church circles until the 1970s. It is now considered one of Rakhmaninov’s greatest achievements.

Here’s a link to Part 9: “Blessed art Thou O Lord”. Spoiler alert… one of the melodies here will be heard again later, at the end of Symphonic Dances.

LINK 3 (7 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRHa84ANeBA All-Night Vigil part 9 - USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir Conductor: Valeri Polyansky 1986

Rakhmaninov in the USSR… political activism Another set-back for Rakhmaninov performance in the USSR came in January 1931 when Rakhmaninov made a rare political stand. He co-signed a letter to the New York Times attacking “naïve” comments from Bengali poet Tagore, who had recently visited the USSR.

This was bad timing; in the USSR the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) was at its most powerful, and cultural revolution was raging.

Here is the letter to the New York Times: [Is Rabindranath Tagore] aware of the fact that all Russia is groaning under the terrible yoke of a numerically negligible but well-organized gang of Communists, who are forcibly, by means of Red Terror, imposing their misrule upon the Russian people? … He cannot be ignorant of the fact that the Communist rulers of Russia… have been penalizing dissenters by exiling them to the extreme north, where those who by a miracle are able to survive the severe climate are compelled by force to perform certain work… At the very time of his visit in Russia, forty-six Russian professors and engineers were executed by the OGPU without any pretence of trial… At no time, in no country, has there ever existed a government responsible for so many cruelties, wholesale murders and common-law crimes in general as those perpetrated by the Bolsheviki. Iwan I. Ostromislensky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Ilya L. Tolstoy – NY Times 15 January 1931

Rakhmaninov in the USSR… excluded from repertoire? In March 1931 Rakhmaninov’s choral symphony The Bells – a setting of Balmont’s translation and elaboration of Edgar Alan Poe’s verses – was performed by Moscow Conservatoire.

RAPM journal Пролетарский музыкант / Proletarian Musician gleefully attacked both composition and composer: The work is pessimistic throughout. The leading idea is the rejection of life and action, and the expectation, indeed the desire for death, death as a blind elemental force of universal annihilation… *Rakhmaninov’s artistic personality…+ Extreme individualism, psychological instability, a lack of will power, interminable pessimism, separation from life, a lack of belief in the forces of man and society, gloomy mysticism, an apologia for death and darkness. [MFW MSP p 298-9]

Within days of The Bells performance, RAPM submitted a motion at the All-Russian Conference on Amateur Art to: lead a ceaseless struggle against the propagandizing of Rakhmaninov’s music, stop publication of scores, remove scores from libraries, and ban performances. [Fairclough p89-90]

The motion passed. Oddly, just one significant institution heeded this motion – Rakhmaninov’s alma mater. Moscow Conservatoire stopped public performance of his works until the early 1940s.

LISTENING NOTES: Rakhmaninov Symphonic Dances op 45

First performance: Philadelphia, 3 January 1941, Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Ormandy This work is dedicated to Eugene Ormandy First Soviet performance: Moscow, 25 November 1943, conducted by Golovanov

Completed Autumn 1940. This is Rakhmaninov’s last composition with an opus number.

Rakhmaninov’s late works have an incredible orchestral sound. They sound more Russian than some earlier works, such as the Second Piano Concerto. They take the heritage of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky Korsakov extend it chromatically, add sounds from jazz and salon music and sometimes reach towards modernism and Prokofiev’s toccata style.

Symphonic Dances was a last minute change of title. It was originally going to be called Fantastic Dances, and the three movements had names: Noon, Twilight, Midnight.

Early critics liberally sprinkle words about phantasms, hauntings, exorcisms… The piece teems with weird sounds, some just plain echoes. Mr Rachmaninoff’s orchestra is definitely haunted, especially the wind section, which is a real rendezvous of ghosts… the memories crowd in thick and fast. [Louis Biancolli New York World Telegram review 1 Aug 1941 Quoted Blair Johnston from Bertensson p 363]

The context of Symphonic Dances is revealing: Western Europe was at war, so Rakhmaninov could no longer spend summers in Switzerland; Most of his recent compositions had been received with little enthusiasm; He was convalescing after an operation; The changing world reminded him of his mortality; He probably envisaged this as his last major work.

Symphonic Dances includes numerous self-quotations. The music can be seen as a career summary, or a self-memorial, comparable to Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Symphony and Viola Sonata, and Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles.

However, two self-quotations, which appear to play pivotal roles in the narrative, would not have been known to the audience. The First Symphony is quoted in the coda of the first movement but Rakhmaninov had suppressed that work soon after its first performance. The finale quotes from All-Night Vigil / Vespers but this Orthodox liturgical work had no performance history in the West.

I Allegro This movement is a vigorous staccato march, and in the central section a long-breathed melancholic theme played initially on alto saxophone. The march sounds like the Tsaritsa of Shemakha’s theme from Rimsky Korsakov’s Golden Cockerel the only score of another composer that Rakhmaninov brought out of Russia in 1917. The opening staccato chord sequence has been found in sketchbooks from 1920-1. The transition to the saxophone theme is a quote from Third Symphony (1936). When the march returns there is a quote from Second Suite for Two Pianos (1901). The coda begins in whole tone scale – a Russian music cliché for a fantastical event. Here the fantastical event is the motto theme from First Symphony (1895) presented in a benign major key.

II Andante con moto (Tempo di valse) This melancholy waltz movement moves in and out of a sinister shadowy world. The time signature fluctuates between 6 / 8, 3 / 8, and 9 / 8. The melody is based on one of Rakhmaninov’s perennial recital pieces: Serenade (1892).

III Lento assai – Allegro vivace – Lento assai. Come prima – Allegro vivace It gradually becomes clear that the first theme is the Gregorian chant Dies Irae. (This is a frequent visitor to Rakhmaninov’s orchestral works; it can be found in all three symphonies, Isle of the Dead, The Bells, Paganini Variations… ) The second theme is “Blessed art Thou O Lord” – section nine of All-Night Vigil / Vespers (1915). This is a meditation on the resurrection of Christ, and its implication for the resurrection of mankind. Effectively the finale is an apocalyptic struggle between death and resurrection. Resurrection overcomes death.

Here is an excellent Soviet recording of Symphonic Dances conducted by one of its strongest advocates – Kirill Kondrashin.

(There is also a wonderful alternative reading by Evgeny Svetlanov.)

LINK 4 (34 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5e8-_ICZoI Symphonic Dances – Kondrashin, Moscow Phil 1963

Soviet Reappraisal Rakhmaninov responded to the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union by dedicating his recitals to the Soviet War effort, and sending his receipts to the Red Army.

The Soviet establishment recognised him as “a great patriot eternally devoted to his homeland”. [Mitchell p 161]

In 1943, the Union of Soviet Composers sent a telegram for his seventieth birthday: We greet you as a composer of whom Russian musical culture is proud, the greatest pianist of our time, a brilliant conductor and public man who in these times has shown patriotic feelings that have found a response in the heart of every Russian. We greet you as a creator of musical works penetrating in their depth and expressiveness. Your piano concertos and symphonies, your chamber works, songs, and other compositions are often played in the Soviet Union, and the public here watches with close attention your creative activity and is proud of your triumphs. [Bertensson, Sergei Rachmaninoff, p384]

Sadly Rakhmaninov was on his death bed. He never saw these words.

Rakhmaninov memorials At a memorial meeting in Moscow, Rakhmaninov was described as: “a tragic national hero, whose ‘fatal error’ in abandoning his homeland had led to his eternal suffering” [Mitchell p 161]

In 1945 Советская Музыка / Soviet Music extended the new narrative: [Rakhmaninov – it was claimed – ] desired to be buried in Moscow after the war, was indifferent to Orthodox spirituality, fascinated by Russian folk belief, and had mistakenly believed there would be no place for music in post-1917 Russia – his departure, in short, was entirely caused by professional considerations, which he had, in his final years, realised were mistaken.

His lengthy compositional silence was caused in large part by the trauma of departing from his ‘beloved motherland, her nature, her day-to-day life, her people’. Indeed, even the composer’s first large-scale composition finished in emigration, the Fourth Piano Concerto, had been started in Russia. [Kuznetsov in Soviet Music 1945, Mitchell p 162]

Rakhmaninov post Stalin After Stalin’s death, in 1953, reminiscences of Rakhmaninov were collected from acquaintances. Not only did they remember the composer’s love of all things connected with his Russian homeland and its people… but also his surprising love of Soviet culture and the Red Army Chorus.

Unusually, a joint Soviet / émigré project was started, to archive memorabilia.

Decade by decade Rakhmaninov was being absorbed into the Soviet main-stream.

In 1968 restoration started at Rakhmaninov’s former estate at Ivanovka, so it could open as a museum.

In 1978 his biographer Yuri Keldysh, the general editor of Музыкальная энциклопедия / Musical encyclopaedia (the leading Soviet musical encyclopaedia) gave a remarkable account of the innate socialism in Rakhmaninov’s work pre-1917: In his works he powerfully expressed the expectant pathos of coming changes—the passionate impulse toward a better future that preoccupied many avant-garde works of Russian literature and art of the period. Artists frequently equated the protest against social and political oppression with the fight for the liberation of mankind’s identity. This impulse also resonates in Rakhmaninov’s works. It is the source of the bright, intense expression in his music and its predominantly lyrical origin. But Rakhmaninov’s lyricism is distant from the exclusive, subjectively obtained lyric of the decadent salons. His oeuvre is characterized by sociability, “openness” of feeling—is always directed to a wide audience. [Reesor p 117]

Symphony No 1 in D Minor op 13 One fascinating consequence of Soviet interest in Rakhmaninov was the reassembling of First Symphony. This work had not been heard for over forty years. When Rakhmaninov recalled it in Symphonic Dances he probably saw the quote as a private gesture.

First Symphony was a student work, written in 1895. It was performed on 15 March 1897 in St Petersburg, conducted by Glazunov.

The symphony’s failure is often attributed to Glazunov, who is said to have under-rehearsed… and over-indulged in vodka.

At the rehearsals Rimsky Korsakov told Rakhmaninov he didn’t find the music agreeable. After the performance there was a devastating review by Cesar Cui, who wrote: If there were a conservatoire in Hell, and if one of its talented students were to compose a programme symphony based on the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, and if he were to compose a symphony like Rakhmaninov’s, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and would delight the inhabitants of Hell. To us this music leaves an evil impression with its broken rhythms, obscurity and vagueness of form, meaningless repetition of the same short tricks, the nasal sound of the orchestra, the strained crash of the brass, and above all its sickly perverse harmonization and quasi-melodic outlines, the complete absence of simplicity and naturalness, the complete absence of themes.

Cui was notorious for vitriolic attacks on music which did not conform to St Petersburg school norms. Bear in mind, Rakhmaninov was an upstart from Moscow Conservatoire.

Reconstruction: Symphony No 1 in D Minor op 13 In 1944 – after Rakhmaninov’s death instrumental parts of First Symphony were found in the Belyayev archive of Leningrad Conservatoire. From these, and a two piano arrangement, Pavel Lamm reconstructed the entire orchestral score.

The second performance took place at Moscow Conservatoire 17 October 1945, conducted by Aleksandr Gauk.

This is a very unusual symphony from a traditional Russian perspective. It has a cyclical form, and tight integration of themes: almost every melody in the symphony can be traced back to three short motifs in the first movement. While the construction is tight, there is a wide emotional range.

The symphony has four movements:

I Grave – Allegro non troppo

II Allegro animato

III Larghetto

IV Allegro con fuoco

Here is a stirring Soviet era performance of First Symphony…

LINK 5 (48 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9lmDVUKQoM Rakhmaninov symphony 1 USSR State Academic Orch cond Svetlanov 1967

Very soon after the premiere of First Symphony, Rakhmaninov started another symphony. But then his confidence collapsed, and for three years he suffered writer’s block.

First Symphony shows a different facet of Rakhmaninov’s style, a gritty tightly argued symphonic style which never returned in his later music. Robert Simpson commented in The Symphony (1966) If Rakhmaninov had followed First Symphony with “advancing successors, he would have been one of the great symphonists of the first half of the twentieth century”.

When Rakhmaninov quoted First Symphony in Symphonic Dances was he thinking about a path he didn’t take as a composer? Or was he thinking about the dedicatee of First Symphony, Anna Alexandrovna Lodyzhenskaya, a married woman with whom he was said to be infatuated?

The Anna Lodyzhenskaya link is intriguing… Taking a cue from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Rakhmaninov inscribed the score of First Symphony “Vengeance is mine; I will repay”.

Bibliography

Bertensson, Leyda, Satina Sergei Rachmaninoff 1956

Pauline Fairclough Classics for the Masses 2016

Marina Frolova-Walker Music and Soviet Power 1917-32 2012 & Jonathan Walker

Robin S Gehl Reassessing a legacy: Rachmaninoff in America 1918-43 2008

Francis Maes A History of Russian Music 1996

Rebecca Mitchell In Search of Russia: Rakhmaninov and the Politics of Music Memory after 1917 In Bullock & Fairclough (ed) 1917 and Beyond 2019

Keenan A Reesor Rachmaninoff in Music Lexicons, 1900–2013: Toward a History of the Composer’s Reception 2016

Л П Синявская «Три русские песни» С. Рахманинова и их художественная идея 1999

Blair Johnston His “Last Work”: hearing ghosts in Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances 2018 Library of Congress talk on rachmaninoff.org