September 25, 2023
Observer classical music critic Maddocks (Hildegard of Bingen) details in this captivating biography the fascinating and traumatic life of Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873—1943). After escaping his home country in 1917 during the Russian Revolution, Rachmaninoff was “a ghost wandering in a world made alien.” A famed composer, performer, and wealthy landowner in Russia, he reinvented himself as a virtuoso pianist in America through punishing cross-country tours that left little time for composing. Three years before his death, he composed “his last spark”—the Symphonic Dances, an orchestral suite suffused with a “lyricism and melody” that reflects a haunted longing for his homeland, according to Maddocks. Categorizing the book as “a broadly chronological set of impressions and excursions,” Maddocks details Rachmaninoff’s interactions with Sergei Prokofiev, Eugene Ormandy, Vladimir Nabokov, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Igor Stravinsky, and others, providing an up-close portrait of an influential musician and the shifting cultural climate in which his legacy was shaped. Classical music lovers will be engrossed.
December 1, 2023
Although classical-music composer, conductor, and virtuoso pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) left his homeland for the U.S. in 1917 due to Lenin's revolution, he never really bid farewell to the influence of Czarist Russia. Classical music critic Maddocks (Music for Life) uses the Library of Congress Music Division's Rachmaninoff Archive and many secondary sources in her colloquially composed interpretation of him. She portrays him as a depressed, self-doubting figure beset by illness. Rachmaninoff interacted with many in music, including Igor Stravinsky, Leopold Stokowski, and Feodor Chaliapin, and with members of the Slavic diaspora of the mid-20th century in the U.S., France, and Switzerland, all places where he lived in exile. Devotion to the upkeep of his summer estate Ivanovka--later seized by the Soviets--was a significant secondary theme in the first part of his life. Readers learn that although Rachmaninoff preferred to compose, he did little after 1917, except for "Symphonic Dances, Op. 45," completed in 1940, his last composition, considered by many to be his farewell masterpiece. Afterward, he earned his income by teaching and performing. VERDICT Music specialists and casual readers will find this an absorbing account of Rachmaninoff's years in exile.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.
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