Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile

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.