The name of S. Rachmaninoff – the greatest Russian composer, pianist, and conductor – is known all over the world.

He was born on April 1873 in Semyonovo. He started to learn music since four years

Rachmaninoff studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory before moving alone to Moscow Conservatory. His parents arranged for him to live in the home of his piano teacher Nikolai Zverev.

The young Rachmaninoff showed great success in both piano and composition, and he ended with gold medal in composition. His First Piano Concerto was the first composition placed in the opus «ONE»

While Rachmaninoff still a student at the Conservatory, he met the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who became an important mentor and commissioned the teenage Rachmaninoff to arrange a piano transcription of the suite from his ballet The Sleeping Beauty. This commission had first been offered to Siloti, who declined, but suggested instead that Rachmaninoff would be more than capable. Siloti supervised the arrangement which became the first of many brilliant and effective transcriptions Rachmaninoff would write over the course of his career. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1892 in an extraordinary class in which he shared the Gold Medal for Piano with Josef Lhévinne and fellow composer/pianist Alexander Scriabin.

[Edit]Setbacks and recovery

The sudden death of Tchaikovsky in 1893 was a great blow to young Rachmaninoff; he immediately began writing a second Trio élégiaque in his memory, revealing the depth and sincerity of his grief in the music's overwhelming aura of gloom.^[9] His First Symphony (Op. 13, 1896) was premièred on 28 March 1897 in one of a long-running series of "Russian Symphony Concerts", but 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.^[10] The deficiencies of the performance, conducted by Alexander Glazunov, were not commented on.^[9] Alexander Ossovsky in his memoir about Rachmaninoff^[11] tells, first hand, a story about this event.^[12] In Ossovsky's opinion, Glazunov made poor use of rehearsal time, and the concert program itself, which contained two other premières, was also a factor. Natalia Satina, later Rachmaninoff's wife, and other witnesses suggested that Glazunov, who was by all accounts an alcoholic, may have been drunk, although this was never intimated by Rachmaninoff.^[13][14]

After the poor reception of his First Symphony, Rachmaninoff fell into a period of deep depression that lasted three years, during which he wrote almost nothing. One stroke of good fortune came from Savva Mamontov, a famous Russian industrialist and patron of the arts, who two years earlier had founded the Moscow Private Russian Opera Company. He offered Rachmaninoff the post of assistant conductor for the 1897–8 season and the cash-strapped composer accepted. The company included the great basso Feodor Chaliapin who would become a lifelong friend.^[15]During this period he became engaged to fellow pianist Natalia Satina whom he had known since childhood and who was his first cousin. The Russian Orthodox Church and the girl's parents both opposed their marriage and this thwarting of their plans only deepened Rachmaninoff's depression.

In January 1900, Rachmaninoff and Chaliapin were invited to Yasnaya Polyana, the home of writer Leo Tolstoy, whom Rachmaninoff greatly admired. That evening, Rachmaninoff played one of his compositions, then accompanied Chaliapin in his song "Fate", one of the pieces he had written after his First Symphony. At the end of the performance, Tolstoy took the composer aside and asked, "Is such music needed by anyone? I must tell you how I dislike it all. Beethoven is nonsense, Pushkin and Lermontov also." (The song "Fate" is based on the two opening measures of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.) As his guests were leaving, Tolstoy said, "Forgive me if I've hurt you by my comments," and Rachmaninoff graciously replied, "How could I be hurt on my own account, if I was not hurt on Beethoven's?" but the criticism of the great author stung nevertheless.

In the same year, Rachmaninoff began a course of autosuggestive therapy with psychologist Nikolai Dahl, who was himself an excellent though amateur musician. Rachmaninoff began to recover his confidence and eventually he was able to overcome his writer's block. In 1901 he completed his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 and dedicated it to Dr. Dahl. The piece was enthusiastically received at its premiere at which Rachmaninoff was soloist and has since become one of the most popular and frequently played concertos in the repertoire. Rachmaninoff's spirits were further bolstered when, after three years of engagement, he was finally allowed to marry his beloved wife, Natalia. They were wed in a suburb of Moscow by an army priest on 29 April 1902, using the family's military background to circumvent the church. The marriage was a happy one, producing two daughters - Irina, later Princess Wolkonsky (1903-1969) and Tatiana Conus (1907-1961). Although Rachmaninoff had an affair with the 22-year-old singer Nina Koshetz in 1916,^[16] his and Natalia's union lasted until the composer's death. Natalia Rachmaninova died in 1951.

After several successful appearances as a conductor, Rachmaninoff was offered a job as conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1904, although political reasons led to his resignation in March 1906, after which he stayed in Italy until July. He spent the following three winters in Dresden, Germany, intensively composing, and returning to the family estate ofIvanovka every summer.^[17]

Rachmaninoff made his first tour of the United States as a pianist in 1909, an event for which he composed the Piano Concerto No. 3 (Op. 30, 1909) as a calling card. These successful concerts made him a popular figure in America, however he was unhappy on the tour and declined requests for future American concerts until after he emigrated from Russia in 1917.^[17] This included an offer to become permanent conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.^[18]

The early death in 1915 of Alexander Scriabin, who had been his good friend and fellow student at the Moscow Conservatory, affected Rachmaninoff so deeply that he went on a tour giving concerts entirely devoted to Scriabin's music. When asked to play some of his own music, he would reply, "Only Scriabin tonight".