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Born this date. I remain as fascinated by and indebted to his music as I was when I first heard it way back when. I have written a great deal about Rachmaninoff here and elsewhere, including a big burst for his sesquicentennial two years ago. You can find a lot of that categorized here. Sometime soon I really need to write that big, epic essay about his Second Symphony. Here is the Israel Brass Quintet playing one of his most famous works, Vocalise. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Born this date: Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of my very favorite musical voices in history. Last year was his 150th, and it seemed to me that we did not hear nearly enough about him back then. I wrote quite a lot on Rachmaninoff last year, but I still didn’t finish my project; the big long walk-through post of his Symphony No. 2 is still locked in my mind. But it’s coming. Someday. Meanwhile, April should always include Rachmaninoff. Every month should include some Rachmaninoff, but particularly April. There’s something in the way Rachmaninoff exudes both optimistic hope and dark brooding, fromDown the rabbit hole….

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The warm months of the year, for us, tend to be bookended by two specific festivals: the Rochester Lilac Festival in May, and the Ithaca Applefest in October. Lots of stuff happens in between, but those are the markers of “outdoor stuff” season. So, yesterday we were off for the Lilac Festival! Which was, this year, well…we’ve been enjoying gorgeous weather recently. Today is sunny and wonderful. The days leading up to yesterday were also mostly pleasant and nice. But yesterday itself was…a soggy rainfest that started before we even left for the day. Here I am, staring existentially outDown the rabbit hole….

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I’ve featured this piece before, and it’s not even by Rachmaninoff. So how does it tie in? Because when it was composed for the film Dangerous Moonlight, a World War II potboiler whose protagonist is a talented pianist and composer, it was as a replacement for the originally planned work: Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto (which will be the major topic of my next Substack newsletter). It’s not entirely clear why the Rachmaninoff couldn’t be used–copyright fees, perhaps–and the producers tried commissioning a work from Rachmaninoff directly, but he turned the offer down. So, in the Concerto’s stead, a new work wasDown the rabbit hole….

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We’ve already heard the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which is one of Rachmaninoff’s enduring later works. By contrast here is another Theme and Variations, this time the Variations on a Theme of Chopin. Rachmaninoff composed this work in 1902, and it is his first large-scale work for solo piano. As such, it isn’t heard very often in performance these days, as it is seen as an awkward and youthful work…but I’ve always liked it rather a lot, especially since I played the very Chopin prelude on which it is based, back in my piano lesson days. The Chopin prelude isDown the rabbit hole….

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Two syrupy 1970s love ballads today! The lead artist here is singer-songwriter Eric Carmen, who was a big star in the 70s and has had a good career all along. You generally can’t go wrong with the 1970s, where power ballads are concerned. The first, “All By Myself”, is actually one of the iconic power ballads of that era. The second, “Never Gonna Fall In Love Again”, is probably less well-known, but it’s a very representative song of its genre. I remember hearing “Never Gonna Fall” the first time…on the Muzak system at work. I wasn’t really processing the song playingDown the rabbit hole….

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If you remember the movie Shine, for which Geoffrey Rush won an Oscar, you may remember something of the reputation of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concert No. 3 in D minor. I’m no concert pianist–hell, I’m not a pianist of any kind, so I am in no way equipped to assess the degree to which that movie mythologizes the phenomenal difficulty of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto. The film, for which actor Geoffrey Rush won an Oscar, tells the story of concert pianist David Helfgott, whose mental illness was exacerbated by his obsession with the Third Concerto and the work he had to endure toDown the rabbit hole….

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There are some pieces of music that take on lives of their own, extending far beyond their origins to become something bigger. Rachmaninoff wrote a song cycle in 1915 called 14 Romances, op. 34. We’ve already noted that Rachmaninoff was one of the great Russian masters of the art song (a facet of his output that is underappreciated by many, including myself), but one of the songs of this cycle transcended the other thirteen and has become not just one of Rachmaninoff’s most well-known works, but one of the most well-known works of classical music…so much so that it isDown the rabbit hole….

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One thing I’ve discovered in reading a lot about Sergei Rachmaninoff over the last few months is that while he led a rich inner life, he didn’t really like to talk much about it. Interviews with him tended to be taciturn affairs, or they would be exercises in frustration for the interviewer in which the subject would avoid any topic that might be of interest to anyone but the subject. Here’s a case in point that ran in a Minneapolis newspaper one hundred years ago! Transcription: Rachmaninoff Likes Yankee Griddle Cakes, Scorns Eggs Russian Pianist More Interested In Breakfast ThanDown the rabbit hole….

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The last major piece of chamber music Rachmaninoff wrote was the Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor, and what a work it is. I’ve only discovered it in the last few months, but it’s been slowly creeping toward my personal pantheon of Rachmaninoff’s works. It’s a piece that’s been having me wonder just why I’ve generally avoided chamber music to the degree I have in my life. Rachmaninoff wrote the piece for a cellist friend of his, Anatoliy Brandukov. Brandukov was one of the finest cellists in Russia, if not the finest, and as such he moved in theDown the rabbit hole….