Photo by Alexander Gray curtesy of Unsplash
The holiday season brings a sense of nostalgia. While it is filled with joy, it also brings sadness for those we have lost and for what once was. This piece exemplifies these feelings. I hope you get a quiet moment during this busy time of year to listen to the beautiful Rachmaninoff Vocalise.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff was born in April,1873, in Semyonovo, northwest Russia. While a young man he consistently amazed his teachers with his jaw-dropping ability as a pianist and composer. He had incredibly large hands, which is why some of his pieces are unbelievably difficult for pianists. He could span thirteen piano keys from the tip of his little finger to the tip of his thumb. On a good day I can reach nine.
At age 18 he created a storm with his first piano concerto. His subsequent piano concertos are two of the most beloved compositions in the genre. The premiere of his first symphony in 1897 was a complete disaster because the conductor Glazunov was at best incompetent, and at worst, drunk. The critics gave it scathing reviews and the piece was never performed again during his lifetime. After this performance Rachmaninoff fell into a deep depression and tried hypnosis to recover. Thankfully he made a triumphant return to the symphonic form with his composition of Symphony No. 2 in 1906. Other famous pieces are his Vespers, Vocalises, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and several solo piano works.
The Russian Revolution forced the composer to leave his country. In December 1917, he left Petrograd for Helsinki with his wife and two daughters on an open sled. They eventually arrived in Stockholm on Christmas Eve. Music critic Fiona Maddocks states, “His homeland was no longer a safe place for anyone born into the gentry. Rachmaninoff, like so many he knew, lost everything: above all, the Ivanovka estate he so loved, where he had spent the long summers writing music. His security and the rhythm of his creative and professional life were shattered.”
After leaving Russia Rachmaninoff launched a lucrative career as a concert pianist. Sadly, the falloff in his compositional output was dramatic after leaving Russia. He wrote 39 compositions while living there between 1892-1917. While mainly living in the US between 1918-1943, he completed only six. He was offered the job of conductor of the Boston Symphony, which he refused twice, instead choosing to concertize across the country as a pianist. Some years he performed as many as 70 concerts and traveled all over the world in style. He died of melanoma in 1943 at his home in Beverly Hills, which was built as a replica of his beloved Ivanovka estate. Writer Fiona Maddocks writes, “Barely conscious, he moved his hands over the bed linen, as if across a piano keyboard. Who, he asked his wife, Natalya, was playing the music he could hear? It was in his head, as it always had been, and would be to the last”.
Vocalise
Vocalise is a piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff, composed and published in 1915 as the last of his14 Romances, Op. 34. The Vocalise was originally composed for soprano voice and piano, but it has also been transcribed for many instrumental combinations - one of the most popular being piano solo. I included three recordings to demonstrate the flexibility of the piece. Its haunting beauty creates a timeless quality transferable to many variations.
Writer Larry Rothe states “...For the six minutes of hypnotic beauty that are Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, we can thank Ivanovka, the composer’s country estate. He loved Ivanovka, loved the expanse of the countryside that ringed it, loved the vast space between his eyes and the long horizon. Most of all, he loved its distance from a world of exhausting duties. Not that he ignored that world. For it wanted his music. And Ivanovka was a quiet place that seemed made for a composer to meet the demands of his public. There, in the summer of 1912, Rachmaninoff completed the fourteen songs that make up his Opus 34. The Vocalise, last of the group, is wordless music whose calm, and whose expansive lines, capture the spirit of its birthplace”.
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