Composer of the Week: Rachmaninov

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Rachmaninov in America: In America: European Vacations

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

In America: European Vacations

Rachmaninov in America

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Rachmaninov in America, In America: European Vacations

Donald Macleod explores Rachmaninov’s pre-war Swiss summers of productive peace and quiet.

Donald Macleod explores Rachmaninov’s productive peace and quiet in pre-war Swiss summers at Senar, his estate.

Reluctant even to visit at first, and once there always more than a little homesick, this proudly Russian composer in fact lived in the United States of America for 25 years, from the end of the First World War until his death in 1943. His life there was principally that of a virtuoso performer, not a composer; and Rachmaninov gave recitals for presidents, recorded discs for Thomas Edison, and felt obliged to rattle off his “hated” Prelude in C sharp minor for concert audiences wherever he went.

In his search for the peace and quiet in which he could compose, Rachmaninov spent huge sums on his new estate in Switzerland. The house he built there, Senar, would be his residence for the next few summers, and the place in which he would write some of his most enduringly popular music.

Variations on a theme of Corelli, Op 42
Nikolai Lugansky, piano

Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, Op 43
Daniil Trifonov, Piano
Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Conductor

Symphony No 3 in A minor, Op 44, second movement
Soviet State Symphony Orchestra
Yevgeny Svetlanov, conductor

Produced by Dominic Jewel for BBC Wales

Composer of the Week: Rachmaninov in America

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod follows Rachmaninov's career after he left Russia to settle in the US.

After the 1917 Revolution, Rachmaninov fled to the US where he settled and stayed for the rest of his life. Donald Macleod follows his progress.

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