Sergei Rachmaninoff

Born in 1873 in Semionovo, in the Novgorod Governorate of the Russian Empire, Sergei Rachmaninoff first established himself as a pianist, composer and conductor trained at the conservatories of Saint Petersburg and Moscow under Nikolai Zverev, Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev. His writing belongs to Russian post-romanticism, characterized by long melodic lines, dense harmonies, bell-like sonorities and a central role for the piano. After an early start he composed the opera Aleko in 1892, then went through a crisis following the failure of his Symphony No. 1 in 1897. His comeback was marked by the Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1901, followed by Symphony No. 2 in 1907, the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead in 1909 and Piano Concerto No. 3 the same year. Rachmaninoff subsequently conducted at the Bolshoi, stayed in Dresden and pursued an international career that brought him to the United States, where he performed with major orchestras and worked, among others, with Gustav Mahler. Forced into exile after the 1917 revolution, Rachmaninoff settled in the United States in 1918, where his work as a concert artist took precedence over composition—without stopping it entirely, as shown by the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934), Symphony No. 3 (1936) and the Symphonic Dances (1940).