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Gentlemen, I, Rachmaninoff,
have just heard myself play! He
might have been a snob, to
judge from that quote.
“I, Rachmaninoff!” Perhaps we don’t
understand the Russian syntax behind
the second language. Ya, Rachmaninoff...
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Rachmaninoff
the Neo-Romantic
Although he spent the second part of his
life in the West, an American resident
and in his last days a citizen, he surrounded
himself with Russian.
Was he a snob? Almost universally
by Toby Earp
recognized as one of the greatest pianists
of his age, he became accustomed,
throughout his career, to critical attacks
on his compositions. They never left him
unfazed, the way they seemed to slide off
Igor Stravinsky. When one piece was
well received, in 1943 not long before
his death, he commented that this was
remarkable. “It must be my last flicker.”
Russian humor, perhaps. Many works
were revised several times during his
lifetime. It is almost as though he was
not sure they were actually any good.
Yet Sergei Rachmaninoff was a
perfectionist in recording, refusing
the release of many because he was not
satisfied with his performance. Yes, he
left recordings, and some of them are
excellent. This is where I want to begin
with Rachmaninoff.
The recordings represent perhaps
the most modern part of his legacy,
along with some compositions like the
Fourth Piano Concerto. For with the
great classical composers the question
remains: how would he (or in rare cases,
she) have played that work? We cannot
hear a performance by Bach, Mozart,
Beethoven or Chopin today, and the
earlier the composer, the further we get
from the practice of the time. Perhaps we
can never know if a modern version represents
a great understanding, or merely
a great egotism. Rachmaninoff, however,
has left us recordings of his own works
(and others’ as well), with which he was
satisfied. Today, a first hearing of one of
his original performances can have an
uncanny quality, as though the past had
moved in next door.
His first discs — 10”, 78 rpm — were
for the Edison company in 1919. He did
not stay with Edison long, however. It
was common practice at the time to
release alternative takes of a piece, and
Edison did exactly that, much against
Rachmaninoff’s wishes. Thomas Edison
himself, deaf by then, had recorded little
classical repertoire as yet, and perhaps
he did not understand the artist. At any
rate Rachmaninoff left for Victor, which
was happy both to give him the terms he
wanted and to respect them.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 63