Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff

1 April 1873 – 28 March 1943

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He was one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, perhaps the last great representative of Romanticism in classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom that included a pronounced lyricism, expressive breadth, structural ingenuity, and a tonal palette of rich, distinctive orchestral colours. The piano features prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output. He made it a point to use his own skills as a performer to explore fully the expressive possibilities of the instrument. Even in his earliest works, he revealed a sure grasp of idiomatic piano writing and a striking gift for melody.

Rachmaninoff was born in 1873 in Semyonovo, near Veliky Novgorod, in north-western . He was born into a noble family of Tatar descent. His parents were both amateur pianists. When he was four, his mother gave him casual piano lessons, but it was his paternal grandfather, Arkady Alexandrovich Rachmaninoff, who brought Anna Ornatskaya, a teacher from , to teach Sergei in 1882. Ornatskaya remained for "two or three years", until the family home had to be sold to settle debts and the Rachmaninoffs moved to .

Sergei studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory before moving alone to Moscow to study piano under Nikolai Zverev and (who was his cousin and a former student of Franz Liszt). He also studied harmony under and counterpoint under Sergei Taneyev.

In Moscow, he met the composer , who became an important mentor and commissioned the teenage Rachmaninoff to arrange a piano transcription of the suite from his ballet The Sleeping Beauty.

The sudden death of Tchaikovsky in 1893 made a strong impression on Rachmaninoff; he immediately began writing a second Trio élégiaque to his memory, clearly revealing the depth and sincerity of his grief in the music's overwhelming aura of gloom.

Rachmaninoff wrote five works for piano and orchestra—four concertos plus the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Of the concertos, the Second and Third are the most popular. He also wrote three symphonies. The second and third symphonies are both considered among his greatest works. Other orchestral works include The Rock, Caprice Bohémien, The Isle of the Dead, and the Symphonic Dances.

Works for piano solo include the Preludes. He wrote two piano sonatas, both of which are large scale and virtuosic in their technical demands. Rachmaninoff also composed works for two pianos, four hands, including two Suites, a version of the Symphonic Dances, and an arrangement of the C-sharp minor Prelude. He also wrote a Russian Rhapsody and arranged his First Symphony for piano four-hands. Both these works were published posthumously.

Rachmaninoff fell ill during a concert tour in late 1942 and was subsequently diagnosed with advanced melanoma. Rachmaninoff died of melanoma on 28 March 1943, in Beverly Hills, California, just four days before his 70th birthday. A choir sang his All Night Vigil at his funeral. He had wanted to be buried at the Villa Senar, his estate in Switzerland, but the conditions of World War II made fulfilling this request impossible. He was therefore interred on 1 June in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.