Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Biography, Net Worth, Fact, Career, Awards and Life Story
Early years
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was born on 1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1873 at a family estate in Novgorod Oblast in north-western Russia. It is unclear if he was born in the estate of Oneg, near Veliky Novgorod, or Semyonovo, near Staraya Russa, but the composer would cite Oneg as his birth place in his adult life. Rachmaninoff’s ancestors were likely from Kazan, Russia as his surname is connected with the Turkic people. He was born into a family of the Russian aristocracy which according to the 17th-century Velvet Book, was of Romanian Tatar origin, descending from Vasile, nicknamed Rachmaninov, a son of the Moldavian prince, Stephen the Great. Rachmaninoff’s family had strong musical and military leanings. His paternal grandfather Arkady Alexandrovich was a musician who had taken lessons from Irish composer John Field. His father, Vasily Arkadyevich Rachmaninoff (1841–1916), was an army officer and amateur pianist who married Lyubov Petrovna Butakova (1853–1929), the daughter of a wealthy army general who gave her five estates as part of her dowry. The couple had three sons and three daughters, Rachmaninoff being their fourth child.
At the age of four, Rachmaninoff began piano and music lessons organised by his mother. She noticed her son’s musical ability to recite passages from memory without playing a wrong note. In 1880, news of the young composer’s gift reached Arkady who suggested she hire Anna Ornatskaya, a teacher from Saint Petersburg and friend of Rachmaninoff’s mother, to live with the family and begin formal lessons. Rachmaninoff later dedicated “Spring Waters”, Song No. 32 to Ornatskaya. In 1882, Rachmaninoff’s father had to auction off their Oneg estate due to his financial incompetence—the family’s five estates had been reduced to one. Rachmaninoff described his father as “a wastrel, a compulsive gambler, a pathological liar, and a skirt chaser”. The family moved to a small flat in Saint Petersburg. When Rachmaninoff’s course of lessons with Ornatskaya neared its end, she arranged for him to study music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, which he entered at age ten, in 1883. That year, his sister Sofia died of diphtheria and his father left the family, with their approval, for Moscow. His maternal grandmother stepped in to help raise the children with particular focus on their spiritual life, regularly taking Rachmaninoff to Russian Orthodox church services where he first experienced liturgical chants and church bells, two features he would incorporate in his future compositions.
In 1885, Rachmaninoff’s sister Yelena died at eighteen of pernicious anemia, shortly prior to her training at the Bolshoi Theatre company. She was an important musical influence to Rachmaninoff who introduced him to the works of Tchaikovsky. As a respite, his grandmother took him to a farm retreat by the Volkhov River where he developed a love for rowing. Rachmaninoff began to adopt a relaxed attitude to his studies, failing his general education classes and changing his report cards in what fellow Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov later called a period of “purely Russian self-delusion and laziness”. In 1885, Rachmaninoff performed at events at the Moscow Conservatory often attended by the Grand Duke Konstantin and other notable figures, but he failed his spring exams, leaving Ornatskaya to notify his mother that his admission to further education might be revoked if his poor performance continued. His mother then consulted with her nephew Alexander Siloti (by marriage), an accomplished pianist and student of Franz Liszt, who praised Rachmaninoff for his piano and listening skills. Siloti recommended he attend the Moscow Conservatory and receive lessons from his former teacher, the more strict Nikolai Zverev, which lasted from 1885 to 1888.
Moscow Conservatory and early compositions
Rachmaninoff found his first romance in the neighbouring Skalon family with Vera, the youngest of three daughters. However, her mother objected and forbade Rachmaninoff to write to her, leaving him to correspond with her older sister Natalia. It is from these letters that many of Rachmaninoff’s early compositions can be traced. During his final studies at the Moscow Conservatory he completed the Youth Symphony, a one-movement symphonic piece, Prince Rostislav, a symphonic poem, and The Rock (Op. 7), a fantasia for orchestra. In the spring of 1891, he passed his final piano exams at the Moscow Conservatory with honours. He then moved to Ivanovka estate with Siloti and began composing his Op. 1, the Piano Concerto No. 1.
On 11 February 1892, Rachmaninoff performed his first independent concert where he premiered his Trio élégiaque No. 1 with violinist David Kreyn and cellist Anatoliy Brandukov. This was followed by a performance of the first movement of his Piano Concerto No. 1 on 29 March. His final composition exercise for the conservatory was Aleko, a one-act opera based on the poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin, which Rachmaninoff completed while staying with his father in Moscow. It was first performed on 19 May 1892 at the Bolshoi Theatre; he thought the work was “sure to fail”, but it was so successful, the theatre agreed to produce it, starring opera singer Feodor Chaliapin who would become a lifelong friend of the composer. The piece earned him a Great Gold Medal, awarded only twice before to Sergei Taneyev and Arseny Koreshchenko. On 29 May 1892, the Conservatory issued Rachmaninoff with a diploma, allowing him to officially style himself as a “Free Artist.”
Rachmaninoff continued to compose, publishing at this time his Six Songs (Op. 4) and Two Pieces (Op. 2). He spent the summer of 1892 on the estate of Ivan Konavalov, a rich landowner in the Kostroma Oblast, and moved back with the Satins in the Arbat District. His publisher was slow in paying, so Rachmaninoff took an engagement at the Moscow Electrical Exhibition, where he premiered his landmark Prelude in C-sharp minor (Op. 3, No. 2), a composition that formed a part of five pieces titled Morceaux de fantaisie, that was well received and became one of his most enduring pieces.
Rachmaninoff spent the summer of 1893 with friends in Lebedyn, where he composed Fantaisie-Tableaux (Suite No. 1, Op. 5) and Morceaux de salon (Op. 10). In September, he published Six Songs (Op. 8), a group of songs set to translations by Aleksey Pleshcheyev of Ukrainian and German poems. Rachmaninoff returned to Moscow, where Tchaikovsky agreed to conduct The Rock, a piece that he grew fond of, for an upcoming tour across Europe. Rachmaninoff then took an excursion to Kiev to conduct several performances of Aleko. It was during his trip when, on 25 October, Rachmaninoff received the news of Tchaikovsky’s death from cholera on 6 November [O.S. 25 October] 1893. That day, he began work on his Trio élégiaque No. 2 for piano, violin and cello as a tribute to the composer. It was completed on 15 December. The music’s aura of gloom reveals the depth and sincerity of Rachmaninoff’s grief for his idol. Its debut performance occurred at the first concert devoted to compositions by Rachmaninoff on 31 January 1894.
Symphony No. 1, depression and conducting debut
In late 1895, to help improve his depleting finances, Rachmaninoff agreed to a three-month concert tour across Russia with a program shared by Teresina Tua, an Italian violinist. He did not enjoy the experience, and quit the tour early while sacrificing his performance fees which caused him to pawn his watch given to him by Zverev. In September 1895, before the tour started, Rachmaninoff completed his Symphony No. 1 (Op. 13), a work conceived in January based on chants heard in Russian Orthodox church services. He worked so hard on the piece, he could not settle himself into composing again until he heard the piece performed. However, Rachmaninoff had to resume work in October 1896 in order to recoup his losses after “a rather large sum of money” that was not his, was stolen during a train journey. Among these were included Six Choruses for Women’s or Children’s Voices (Op. 15) and Moments Musicaux (Op. 16), his final completed composition for several months.
The Symphony No. 1 premiered on 28 March 1897 in one of a long-running series of Russian Symphony Concerts. The piece was brutally panned by critic and nationalist composer César Cui, who likened it to a depiction of the ten plagues of Egypt, suggesting it would be admired by the “inmates” of a music conservatory in Hell. The deficiencies of the performance, conducted by Alexander Glazunov, were not commented on by critics, but according to a memoir from Alexander Ossovsky, a close friend of Rachmaninoff, Glazunov made poor use of rehearsal time, and the concert’s program itself, which contained two other premières, was also a factor. Other witnesses suggested that Glazunov, an alcoholic, may have been drunk, although this was never intimated by Rachmaninoff. Following the reaction to his first symphony, Rachmaninoff wrote in May 1897 that “I’m not at all affected” by its lack of success or critical reaction, but felt “deeply distressed and heavily depressed by the fact that my Symphony … did not please me at all after its first rehearsal.” He thought its performance was poor, particularly Glazunov’s contribution. The piece was not performed for the rest of Rachmaninoff’s life, but he revised it into a four-hand piano arrangement in 1898.
Rachmaninoff fell into a depression that lasted for three years, during which he composed almost nothing. He compared this time “Like the man who had suffered a stroke and for a long time had lost the use of his head and hands”, and made a living by giving piano lessons. A stroke of good fortune came from Savva Mamontov, a Russian industrialist and founder of the Moscow Private Russian Opera Company, who offered Rachmaninoff the post of assistant conductor for the 1897–98 season. The cash-strapped composer accepted, conducting Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns as his first on 12 October 1897. In January 1899, Rachmaninoff attempted composition for the first time and completed two short piano pieces, Morceau de Fantaisie and Fughetta in F major. Two months later, he travelled to London for the first time to perform and conduct which earned positive reviews.
During his time at the opera company, Rachmaninoff became engaged to his first cousin Natalia Satina, a fellow pianist whom he had known since childhood. However, the Orthodox church and Satina’s parents opposed their announcement, thwarting their plans for marriage. Rachmaninoff’s depression worsened in late 1899 following an unproductive summer; he composed one song, “Fate”, which later made up his Twelve Songs (Op. 21) and left compositions for a proposed return visit to London unfulfilled.
Therapy and recovery
By 1900, Rachmaninoff had become so self-critical that composing became near impossible. His family and friends decided to seek professional help, to which Rachmaninoff agreed without resistance. In January, he began a three-month daily course of hypnotherapy and psychotherapy with physician and amateur musician Nikolai Dahl. Dahl structured his sessions to help the composer’s sleep patterns, improve his mood and appetite during the day, and reignite the desire to compose. With further support from those close around him, Rachmaninoff felt “new musical ideas began to stir” within him and made a successful return to composing in the summer. His first major completed work, the Piano Concerto No. 2, is dedicated to Dahl. Rachmaninoff was the soloist at the premiere of the first and last movements on 2 December 1900 and the entire piece in 1901, which was enthusiastically received. Rachmaninoff’s spirits grew when, after three years of engagement, he finally married Satina on 29 April 1902 at a ceremony held in an army chapel in a Moscow suburb. The couple used the family’s military background to circumvent the church as Rachmaninoff was not a regular church attendee and avoided confession, two things a priest had to confirm on a signed certificate. They settled in Moscow where they had two daughters, Irina Sergeievna Rachmaninova (1903–1969) and Tatiana Sergeievna Rachmaninova (1907–1961).
In 1904, Rachmaninoff agreed to a stint as conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre where he conducted his two new operas, The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini, in January 1906. His position came to an end following the political unrest surrounding the 1905 Russian Revolution, resulting in his resignation in February 1906, after which he and his family went on holiday in Italy until July that year. In 1906, Rachmaninoff moved his family to Dresden, Germany and spent his time intensively composing, only to return to the Ivanovka family estate in the summer. His sense of self-worth as a symphonist was regained following the enthusiastic reaction to the premiere of his Symphony No. 2 in early 1908, where he was awarded with his second Glinka Award ten months later for 1,000 roubles. From 1909 to 1910, Rachmaninoff embarked on his first tour of North America, playing the piano and conducting across 26 performances which marked the composer’s first solo piano recitals without another performer on the program. His first recital occurred at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts on 4 November 1909 and his first with an orchestra followed on 8 November. He conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra for his conducting debut, and premiered his Piano Concerto No. 3 (Op. 30) with the New York Symphony Orchestra. The tour made him a popular figure in America; however, he was unhappy and declined subsequent job offers. He declined to be the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra as such a long absence from his home and family in Russia seemed “absurd”.
In 1912, Rachmaninoff quit his position as vice-president of the Russian Musical Society in protest when he heard that a musician in an administrative post with the society was dismissed on the grounds of being Jewish. Rachmaninoff biographer Sergei Bertensson wrote that Rachmaninoff took his position in the society seriously, “and for Rachmaninoff ‘seriously’ meant with moral as well as artistic seriousness: these were really fused in him.” Soon after his resignation, Rachmaninoff was exhausted from overworking and took his family on holiday in Switzerland and Rome, during which he worked on The Bells, but the holiday was cut short when his two daughters contracted typhoid and were treated in Berlin as he lacked trust in the Italian doctors. Rachmaninoff conducted the premiere of The Bells in Saint Petersburg in November 1913. He completed his All-Night Vigil (Op. 37) in 1915 after he witnessed a performance of an earlier choral work, Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (Op. 31), and felt disappointed with the composition. He handed it to Taneyev to correct any errors in its polyphony, but it was returned unaltered with compliments. It was received so warmly at its premiere in Moscow in aid of war relief that four additional performances were quickly scheduled. The early death of Alexander Scriabin in 1915, a good friend and fellow student at the Moscow Conservatory, affected Rachmaninoff so deeply that he learned a selection of his piano compositions and completed a concert tour devoted to Scriabin’s music to raise funds for his widow. That summer, during a vacation in Finland, Rachmaninoff learned of Taneyev’s death, a loss which, along with his father’s passing that year, affected him greatly.
Emigration to the United States
The day the Russian Revolution of February 1917 began in Saint Petersburg, Rachmaninoff performed a piano recital in Moscow in aid of wounded Russian soldiers who had fought in the war. He supported the political changes and donated his fee to charity. Following a break with his family in the more peaceful Simeiz, Crimea in August, Rachmaninoff performed at a concert the following month at Yalta. It was his final performance in Russia, before events surrounding the Revolution of October 1917 marked the end of Russia as the composer had known it. As a member of the Russian bourgeoisie, he did not support Bolshevism, neither did his father manage to keep up with the aristocratic circles he had been born into, so that in due course came the humiliation of selling the family estate; then Rachmaninoff’s own estate, Ivanovka, was seized by the Leninist regime in 1917. At the height of such turmoil, Rachmaninoff received an offer to perform ten piano recitals across the peaceful Scandinavia, which he used as an excuse to quickly obtain permits for his family to leave the country. On 22 December 1917, they left on an open sled, travelling north through Finland and on to Helsinki with some money, a few notebooks with sketches of compositions, and two orchestral scores; the first Act of his unfinished opera Monna Vanna and Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Golden Cockerel. They reached safety in Stockholm, Sweden and, in early 1918, settled in Copenhagen, Denmark where Rachmaninoff worked as a concert pianist, practising exhaustively to improve his technique and learning further compositions to play. The tour lasted from February to July 1918.
With the war continuing across Europe throughout 1918, Rachmaninoff planned his future; he could stay and continue performing and composing, or move once more. Late in the year, he once again received an offer to become conductor of the Boston and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, but declined. As composing would not pay enough to support himself, Rachmaninoff now saw performing in America as the best solution to his growing financial concerns. On 1 November 1918, the family boarded a boat in Oslo, Norway bound for New York City, arriving eleven days later. They settled in 505 West End Avenue and Rachmaninoff accepted a piano from Steinway as a gift, and acquired Charles Ellis as his agent, who secured him forty performances across the following four months. The family recreated the atmosphere of their Ivanovka estate at their new home, entertaining Russian guests, employing Russian servants, and observing Russian customs. In 1920, Rachmaninoff signed a recording contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company which earned him some much-needed income. He became a member of the board of directors for the Tolstoy Foundation Center in Valley Cottage, New York.
Rachmaninoff sought the company of fellow Russian musicians and befriended pianist Vladimir Horowitz; their first meeting, arranged by Steinway artist representative Alexander Greiner, took place in the basement of Steinway Hall in New York City on 8 January 1928, four days prior to Horowitz’s debut at Carnegie Hall playing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which Rachmaninoff intended to attend, as he had heard positive reviews of Horowitz’s playing of his own Piano Concerto No. 3; and he expressed a wish to accompany Horowitz in a performance of the piece. For Horowitz, the opportunity represented a dream come true as Rachmaninoff was “the musical god of my youth … the most unforgettable impression of my life!” About the pianist’s interpretation of Rachmaninoff’s own third concerto, the composer said to Abram Chasins that Horowitz “swallowed it whole … he had the courage, the intensity, the daring.” The men remained supportive of each other’s work, each making a point of attending concerts given by the other. Horowitz remained a champion of Rachmaninoff’s solo works and his Piano Concerto No. 3, about which Rachmaninoff remarked publicly after 7 August 1942 performance at the Hollywood Bowl: “This is the way I always dreamed my concerto should be played, but I never expected to hear it that way on Earth.”
In 1929, conductor and music publisher Serge Koussevitzky asked Rachmaninoff if he would select pieces from his Études-Tableaux for Italian composer Ottorino Respighi to orchestrate. Rachmaninoff agreed, giving Respighi five pieces from Études-Tableaux, Op. 33 (1911) and Études-Tableaux, Op. 39 (1917) and the inspirations behind the compositions, something that he did not previously reveal. Respighi, however, titled each piece from the clues Rachmaninoff gave him and completed the orchestrations in 1930. During his summers from 1929 to 1931, Rachmaninoff spent his time in Clairefontaine-en-Yvelines near Rambouillet, France, meeting with fellow Russian emigres there.
Final compositions, illness and death
Demanding concert tour schedules caused Rachmaninoff’s output as a composer to slow significantly, so that between his arrival in the US in 1918 and his death in 1943, he completed just six compositions. Clearly his composition time was limited because he had to keep performing to support his family, but also his nostalgia for Russia seemed to dampen his compositional creativity. So demanding was his schedule that he termed his concert season ‘harvest time’, becoming increasingly disillusioned, and entrenched in the idea of his being a failure: ‘I was born a failure and therefore I bear all the burdens that are inseparably part of this status,’ he wrote to Yevgeny Somov in 1923. Despite Rachmaninoff’s concerns, he was lauded by the American public, who loved seeing the famous composer of their favourite Prelude in C Sharp Minor. However, such popularity was not without its pressures. Whilst the American public clamoured for him, critical reception was divided and Rachmaninoff had to continually defend himself in the age-old debate of whether music could be both ‘serious’ and popular.
Some asserted that Rachmaninoff’s music was derivative, perhaps because he was a Romantic at heart and eschewed much of the contemporary revolution in musical thought which was emerging in the early 20th century. Music critic Paul Rosenfeld’s remark that Rachmaninoff’s music ‘wants the imprint of a decided and important individuality,’ can have done nothing to alleviate the composer’s writer’s block.
Rachmaninoff did eventually return to composing in 1932, following the completion of his new home, Villa Senar, near Hertenstein, Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, where he retreated during his summers from 1932 to 1939. In the comfort of his own villa, which reminded him of his old family estate in Russia, Rachmaninoff composed Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 1934 and Symphony No. 3 (Op. 44, 1935–36).
In December 1939, Rachmaninoff conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra, his first conducting role since January 1917, his last appearance as a conductor in Russia. In the early 1940s, he was approached by the makers of the British film Dangerous Moonlight to write a short concerto-like piece for use in the film, but he declined. The job went to Richard Addinsell and the orchestrator Roy Douglas, who came up with the Warsaw Concerto. Rachmaninoff’s last completed work, Symphonic Dances (Op. 45, 1940), was the only piece he composed in its entirety while living in the U.S. Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered Symphonic Dances on 7 January 1941 at the Academy of Music.
In 1942, Rachmaninoff’s doctor advised him to move to a warmer climate; his family settled in Beverly Hills, California. Later that year, Rachmaninoff fell ill during a concert tour and was later diagnosed with advanced melanoma. His family was informed, but he was not. On 1 February 1943, Rachmaninoff and Satina became American citizens. His last recital, performed on 17 February 1943 at the Alumni Gymnasium at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, included Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 which contains a funeral march. He became so ill after the performance that he had to return home. Rachmaninoff died on 28 March 1943, four days before his 70th birthday. A choir sang his All Night Vigil at his funeral. He had wanted to be buried at Villa Senar, his estate in Switzerland, but the conditions of World War II made fulfilling his request impossible. Instead, he was interred on 1 June in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. A statue marked “Rachmaninoff: The Last Concert”, designed and sculpted by Victor Bokarev, stands at the World Fair Park in Knoxville as a tribute.
After Rachmaninoff’s death, poet Marietta Shaginyan published fifteen letters they exchanged from their first contact in February 1912 and their final meeting in July 1917. The nature of their relationship bordered on romantic, but was primarily intellectual and emotional. Shaginyan and the poetry she shared with Rachmaninoff has been cited as the inspiration for the six songs that make up his Six Songs, Op. 38.
In August 2015, Russia announced its intentions to seek reburial of Rachmaninoff’s remains in Russia, claiming that Americans have neglected the composer’s grave while attempting to “shamelessly privatize” his name. The composer’s descendants have resisted this idea, pointing out that he died in the U.S. after spending decades outside of Russia in self-imposed political exile.
