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painful scenes at home, and after a stressful
period the family broke up. Vasily left
to live with his mother.
It was a drastic break from the life
Sergei had known, its challenge a precursor
of exile later on. The boy drifted,
comforted by a bond with his maternal
grandmother, who apparently spoiled
him. Schooling in preparation for entry
into the St. Petersburg Conservatory
had been arranged, but once there he
began to skip classes, only continuing
to attend musical courses. He doctored
his own report cards. Another beloved
older sister, Yelena, who had a beautiful
contralto voice and was engaged by the
Bolshoi Opera, died of anemia. When
the young Rachmaninoff failed all his
non-musical subjects and risked losing
a scholarship, his mother appealed to
Alexander Siloti, a cousin and former
student of Nikolai Zveref in Moscow.
Sergei’s musical talent was evaluated and
he was sent to Zveref.
Sergei was lucky. Zveref’s home was
an ideal environment for a talented
twelve-year-old in need of structure.
The regime was strict but not draconian:
three hours’ practice daily. Zveref’s
unmarried sister was a female presence.
Zveref had two other resident pupils
who shared the piano room, and nonresident
students as well, including the
young Alexander Scriabin. The boys
practised in shifts, taking turns to get
up and start at 6:30 a.m. Sundays were
open house for Moscow’s musical and
intellectual elite, and Rachmaninoff
played for Tchaikovsky, Arensky and
others, including the great pianist and
composer Anton Rubinstein. Though
Rubinstein’s own playing had no effect
on Sergei at the age of 12, the following
year was a different story. Zveref’s
students attended multiple recitals and
Rachmaninoff was deeply touched. As
late as the 1930’s he wrote with passion
of Rubinstein’s beauty of tone, his “profound,
spiritually refined musicianship,”
and his dictum that the pedal was “the
soul of the piano.”
Rachmaninoff started formal composing
at this time, as part of his education
at the Moscow Conservatory. His
very earliest pieces have mostly not
survived, but there is a Lento in D minor
written as an exercise for Arensky’s
harmony class at the Conservatory,
presumably in 1887. Arensky was pleased
with his harmonization; by 1888 Rachmaninoff
had moved into the “special
theory” stream at his school, the one
for pupils destined to be composers. At
the end of that year he passed his theory
examinations with the highest possible
mark. One of the examiners was Tchaikovsky,
who predicted a great future for
the young man.
Rachmaninoff graduated in May
1892 with the highest possible mark and
in addition, the Moscow Conservatory’s
Great Gold Medal, awarded for only the
third time. His final examination had
been his performance of his own short
opera Aleko, based — like the other
graduates’ works — on a rushed libretto
derived from a Pushkin story. His success
brought him a deal with the music
publisher Gutheil.
It also reconciled him with Zveref,
with whom he had broken at age 16,
perhaps because the teacher had refused
to provide him with a piano room for
composing. On this occasion Zveref gave
him a gold watch. At that time Rachmaninoff
had found a welcome with his
father’s sister Varvara Satin, whose busy
home and four daughters represented a
sharp contrast to the monastic life with
Zveref. This relationship would provide
him with an invitation to the family
estate, Ivanovka, where he spent most
summers for years to come.
During his time at the Moscow
Conservatory, Rachmaninoff composed
intensely. At least one of the early
works, the Russian Rhapsody, formed the
basis of a revised, possibly improved,
version published much later. He also
started work on the First Piano Concerto,
of which the just-completed rewrite
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