Showing very early in his life talents for music and notably for the piano, Sergei Rachmaninov was directed, around the age of twelve to move to the Moscow Imperial Conservatory. He attended Zverev's classes (piano), Taneiev's classes (composition) and Arensky's classes (composition).

In 1892 he obtained the golden medal for the opera Alesko he himself composed and then was headed for performance: a career as a piano vertuoso that was going to sustain his life as a composer and to assure him a world-famous reputation. But unfortunately, that same career as performer pianist was also going to take the interest of the musicologists away from him...

However, composition always remained a major preoccupation for our musician. Under the benevolent leadership of Tchaïkovski, he thus wrote, as soon as 1892, compositions for the piano (Morceaux de fantaisie for the piano op. 3, Fantaisie-Tableaux for two pianos op.5...) or for chamber music (Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor) and the orchestra (symphony Le Rocher) . And if a few years later his First Symphony was a failure (which would make him renounce his pen for almost three years), in 1901 he wrote the famous Second Piano Concerto which was very successful. Very often, the first listener to come would not remember this work, which wonderfully illustrates Rachmaninov's sensitivity, that is still very attached to Romanticism.

However, although it reveals Rachmaninov's very pianistic style, the safeguard that the tonal system constitutes and his melodic inventiveness, which is here very original, this work is in fact the first landmark of an extremely productive period for him.

Actually, from 1901 to 1917 Rachmaninov composed a consequent range of works, including symphonies, symphonic poems, the Third Piano Concerto , but particularly partitions that were only directed to his favourite instrument: the piano (the Preludes op.23, the Etudes-Tableaux op.33 and 39, and two Sonatas). Carried away by the wave of renewal that was implementing in the end of the 19th century concerning religious music (remember he ws a contemporary of Scriabin, Ravel and Bartók) he wrote for soloists and a capella two majestic cycles of Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1910) and The Vespers (1915).

After having immigrated in Sweden, then in the United States and in Switzerland, it was finally in Northern America that he would live, suffering from the nostalgia of his country until the end of his life. During those last years , his artistic production was reduced although he gave birth to his Fourth Piano Concerto or other works which were marked with his personal inventiveness like his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Variations on a Theme of Corelli.

As a pen who knew how to never be an imitation despite his strong Romantic impregnation, who knew how to make the musical verb sing vocally as well as instrumentally, we are going to remember you, Sir Rachmaninov!

Coralie Welcomme

Translation Alexandra Maffei