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Rachmaninoff at Ivanovka, mid-1890’s, at rear second from left
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Those first recordings for Edison performance was encoded by cutting
Rachmaninoff was born in 1873,
the same year as his friend the great
basso Fyodor Chaliapin. That made
him 44 years old when he emigrated to
the West just before Christmas 1917,
two months almost to the day after the
Bolshevik Revolution. He had a family
and a household by then but had to leave
Moscow with only a small suitcase, since
he was ostensibly going to perform by
invitation in Stockholm. Nobody asked
the awkward question as to why his
wife and daughters were accompanying
him.
The Rachmaninoffs went by train to
St. Petersburg, thence to Finland and by
open sledge to the Swedish border. With
him were the manuscripts of his works in
progress, including a fresh rewrite of his
First Piano Concerto, composed when he
was a teenager, as well as the manuscript
for an opera, Monna Vanna, which he was
never to finish. He could take nothing
else with him, and little money. It was a
complete and utter break with his home
and his busy and successful life up to that
time. Worst of all, perhaps, was leaving
his beloved estate, Ivanovka and indeed
all Russia, in the hands of the people who
would repress and destroy it over the
next sixty years. In any case, from then
on most of his creative energy would
were acoustic, made by capturing sound slots in rolls of paper. Rachmaninoff have to go into performing.
with a large horn whose vibrations at made his first rolls for Ampico in 1923, He had been born into a minor
the small end controlled About the movement the and the Audiophile quotation at the beginning Store
of this aristocratic family. Following Russian
of a stylus. Edison’s recordings were article is his reaction to his first audition tradition, his father Vasily joined the
engraved vertically, creating The a hill-and- eight pages of that the result. follow Since are a catalog then companies for The Audiophile such army, Store. though he had musical ability.
dale groove. Of course The that store made belongs the as to Klavier UHF, and have it issued is stocked high-quality with accessories CDs Vasily and record- married into wealth, and the
records highly vulnerable ings to that surface we recommend? of these piano rolls being played back by woman who was to be Sergei Rachmani-
noise. Rachmaninoff, whose Do ear we we have pre- a conflict a perfectly-adjusted of interest? Actually reproducing we don’t, piano, because noff’s anything mother brought five estates to her
sume was a good one, said we that don’t Edison’s like doesn’t thus make bringing it to the the store. “high We’re end” not of tempted 1923 husband. to cheat, Both be- parents played piano, and
early records made his piano cause sound the credibility just within we’ve the built reach up of over almost the years anyone. is worth a Sergei lot more showed than signs of musical aptitude
like…a Russian balalaika! a few sales. If a competitor Unlike makes Josef something Hofmann, better, another so be it, early and we’ll on. A even teacher was brought from
What we have of remarkable say so in quality a review. great pianist of the time and a friend, Moscow. Three boys and three girls were
today by Rachmaninoff is in And a quite the dif- store actually Rachmaninoff protects did us not from feel potential that his conflicts. rolls born, but Vasily was unstable and feckferent
medium. Even in the In early the past, days advertisers and electrically-recorded have attempted to discs shake were us down, in less, threatening and also well known for misplaced
of sound recording technology to cancel their there ads competition if we published with something his live performances.
negative. It hasn’t generosity. happened One by one the estates were
were degrees of fidelity. for The a while, high end but then This everyone seems progressive knows it won’t of him; work. we The can Audiophile sold. The Store last had to be auctioned off in
in the early 1920’s was the puts reproducing eight pages of imagine advertising that in he every might issue, have and been those in are pages 1882, no when one Sergei was nine. The family
piano, a descendant of the can player cancel. piano favour of downloaded music in our day. moved from the country and a life as
(and a technology which has Check continued out the In store, fact ot by its 1925 on-line he counterpart. felt that the We art think of privileged there’s great landowners to a small flat in
to mature to this day). The stuff reproducing there. If we didn’t music think could so, be it well-served wouldn’t be by there.
record- St. Petersburg.
piano’s pneumatic system made it posing. We will come to his definition of They were now poor. A diphtheria
sible to record dynamics and inflections musical art, but first we should look at its epidemic broke out and three of the
with a fidelity the phonograph could not origins in his training and in his career children caught the disease, including
approach, and its piano tone quality was in Russia, which had come to a drastic Sergei. His elder sister Sofia did not
of course quite natural-sounding. The end only a few years earlier.
recover. At the same time there were
64 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine