Rachmaninov

by Robert Matthew-Walker

  Towards the end of 1902, Sergei and Natalia moved into an apartment in the America block, and Natalia discovered she was pregnant. Rachmaninoff accepted two undemanding teaching posts, giving him time to pursue his writing and his concert career, which took another step forward with invitations to play the Second Concerto in Vienna and Prague. The performances were to be conducted by Safonoff, whose cool attitude towards Rachmaninoff continued. Whatever reserve lay between them, the concerts went off smoothly and early in 1903 Rachmaninoff, back in Moscow, gave the first performances of the Chopin Variations on February 10th/23rd as well as several of the Opus 23 Preludes (the set was incomplete). The G minor, published as Opus 23 No 5, was played then, and became possibly the second favourite of Rachmaninoff’s Preludes, after the C-sharp minor.

  The Variations were dedicated to the elderly St Petersburg piano pedagogue, Theodore Leschetizky, whose wife, Annette Essipova, also taught piano at the Conservatory. She had a remarkable pupil joining her class the year following Rachmaninoff’s recital, the twelve-year-old Sergei Prokofiev.

  While the Rachmaninoff’s awaited the birth of their first child, Sergei completed the Opus 23 Preludes. As Alexis Weissenberg has pointed out, there is a strong link between them in their published order, so if performed as a set, they make, like Chopin’s, an excellent sequence.

  Natalia’s pregnancy was uncomplicated and a girl, christened Irina, was born on May 14th/27th. No sooner had they gone to Ivanovka for the summer holiday than all three of them fell ill. The parents, themselves unwell, were concerned at the condition of their baby, but after several weeks they all recovered and Rachmaninoff was able to start a major project unfettered by personal worries. This was a new opera, composed with Chaliapin in mind for the title rôle.

  The Rachmaninoff’s country estate at Ivanovka.

  The Miserly Knight is one of a series of dramatic poems by Pushkin to be read rather than performed. Rachmaninoff was drawn by the opportunity it afforded him to create a sympathetic part for Chaliapin, and work on The Miserly Knight led to him returning to his other postponed opera, Francesca da Rimini, which he had started in 1900. He was encouraged by news of first performances of his works abroad: the Cello Sonata, premièred in London on January 18th by Percy Such and Lucy Polgreen in St James’s Hall, and in America the First Piano Concerto in Boston, and The Rock in New York, by the émigré-formed Russian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Modest Altschuler, an old class-mate of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, who had emigrated to the U.S.A. some years before.

  The Russian government began to reap the whirlwind of Witte’s economic policies. The Port Arthur pact with China, which gave Russia access to the Pacific, led to confrontation with Japan, and war broke out on February 6th 1904, eleven days before Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, set in Japan, received its première at La Scala. The Russian forces were ineffective against the Japanese, and suffered humiliating defeat at Liaotung. The dissident Lenin, whose elder brother had been hanged for his part in an assassination attempt on Alexander III in 1887, watched events from exile in Switzerland.

  At home opera dominated Rachmaninoff’s life for apart from The Miserly Knight and Francesca he was invited by the Bolshoi Opera in Moscow to conduct several operas the following season. The Kerzin family, who sponsored concerts under the title ‘Friends of Russian Music’, also offered Rachmaninoff a contract to conduct a series of orchestral concerts. Alexander Siloti had been musical director of the Bolshoi several seasons previously, and Rachmaninoff’s acquaintance with the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Michael, a music-lover and confidant of the Lievin family, who greatly admired Rachmaninoff’s music, doubtless led to the offer to conduct the State Opera. By March 1904 Rachmaninoff completed The Miserly Knight and immediately began work on Francesca da Rimini, hoping to complete it by the end of his holiday in order to prepare for his debût at the Bolshoi in September. In spite of several problems with Modest Tchaikovsky’s libretto which were quickly resolved, Rachmaninoff proceeded with the second opera, completing it in August. Early that month he wrote to Modest complaining of a “shortage of words” in the libretto. As the dramaturgical essence of the libretto is weak, Rachmaninoff did not repeat words to flesh out the music, so the libretto’s brevity gave rise to problems. However, Rachmaninoff had every reason to feel pleased with the music. He took up his position at the Bolshoi that month and immediately created a sensation at rehearsals.

  He was to open with Dargomijsky’s Rusalka which he had already conducted for the Mamontov Company. He was not to be embarrassed this time. Until Rachmaninoffbecame musical director it was the custom at the Bolshoi for the conductor to sit close to the stage during performances, with the orchestra behind him. This was fine for the singers, but the orchestra was at a disadvantage in having to follow the conductor from the back. He rearranged the orchestral seating with the approval of Serge Koussevitsky, who recently joined the double-bass section, having completed a five-year course in the instrument at the Moscow Conservatory in five months! Rachmaninoff’s change was sensible and common practice in other opera-houses, but the pampered singers on stage protested. Rachmaninoff had his way, but other conductors during the season had to stand in the old position. He rehearsed the chorus section by section: first the men, the next day the women. In addition, with his superb piano technique and no little experience, he coached the principals at the piano. The changes provoked considerable comment, but they were sensible and necessary: Rachmaninoff criticised the singers frankly, and also the orchestra, but the musicians grew to respect him as they realised his goal was improved standards.

  Chaliapin in 1900.

  Rusalka opened on September 3rd/16th and was well received. His change of layout brought noticeable improvements: “… even in the first bars of the overture the audience began to feel a new freshness and vitality …” reported the Moscovskie Vedotnosty critic Nikolai Kashkin two days later. Rachmaninoff followed this with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Borodin’s Prince Igor (with Chaliapin) and also with Chaliapin a centenary production of Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar. To mark the Glinka centenary, Belaieff founded a series of annual ‘Glinka Prizes’. The first were announced that year, and Rachmaninoff received one for his Second Concerto.

  This was a busy and successful time for Rachmaninoff: in addition to his opera engagements he had orchestral concerts for the Kerzins. These began shortly after the opera season ended in the spring of 1905 where, among several Russian works, his interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony won special praise. Nikolai Medtner recalled the performance:

  I shall never forget Rachmaninoff’s interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. Before he conducted it, we heard it only in the version of Nikisch and his imitators … his pathetic slowing of the tempo became the law for performing Tchaikovsky, enforced by conductors who had followed him blindly. Suddenly, under Rachmaninoff, all this imitative tradition fell away from the composition and we heard it as if for the first time; especially astonishing was the cataclysmic impetuosity of the finale, an antithesis to the pathos of Nikisch that had always harmed this movement …

  With the concert and operatic season over Rachmaninoff had cause to feel pleased with his work during the previous eight months, for his undoubted conducting skills in both opera house and concert hall were being recognised at a time when, aged 32, he seemed destined for a great career. However, his compositions demanded his attention and he used all his time during the spring and summer to score the two operas as they were to be produced in a double bill at the Bolshoi during his next season.

  The Miserly Knight Opus 24, is dated June 7th/20th, and on July 22nd/August 4th he completed Francesca da Rimini. During the early months of the year few Muscovites would have bothered to notice the first performance by Nicholas Richter on February 9th/22nd of a new Piano Sonata composed by the twenty-three-year old Igor Stravinsky. Rachmaninoff doubtless heard that the double-bass player, Serge Koussevitsky, had become engaged to Natalia, daughter of a Moscow
tea millionaire.

  The young English musician, Leopold Stokowski, was between two stools: he wanted to study conducting under Nikisch in Germany but, as organist and choirmaster of St James’s Piccadilly, in London, he received an offer to take up a similar post at St Bartholemew’s Church, New York. The church was among the wealthiest in the city, located at the corner of Madison Avenue and 44th street: he decided to go to America, and in September set foot in the New World for the first time.

  Serge Koussevitzky, 1903.

  With the operas written, Rachmaninoff prepared the forthcoming Bolshoi season. Rimsky-Korsakov had completed a new opera, Pan Voyevoda, and Rachmaninoff was to conduct the première in September. Rimsky-Korsakov was so impressed with Rachmaninoff’s ability during the rehearsals that he invited him to conduct the première of another opera, his recently-completed The Invisible City of Kitezh.

  Political events, which never bothered Rachmaninoff unduly, now forced themselves to the centre of every stage. The war with Japan went badly for the Russians: Port Arthur fell in January and in March a heavy military defeat at Mukden led to the complete destruction of the Russian fleet at Tsushima on May 27th. This was a catastrophe for the government for the losses (which were territorially very limited) exposed large-scale corruption in high places. Lenin, now in Finland, called the war “the locomotive of revolution”. A wave of earlier strikes coincided with the assassination of the Minister of the Interior on July 28th 1904, and several months later street fighting erupted in the capital and Moscow. On January 22nd 1905, a large crowd of workers with their families demonstrated peacefully outside the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, led by Father Gregory Gapon, to present a petition to the Tsar. The guards lost their heads and opened fire: five hundred men, women and children were killed on ‘Bloody Sunday’, and the wave of revulsion which swept through the country led to the mutiny of the sailors on board the battleship Potemkin in June, and strikes in Moscow by printers and railway workers. Almost immediately there was a general strike: even the musicians and the corps de ballet at the Bolshoi took part and, alarmed at the turn of events, the Tsar agreed to the main demand of the October manifesto, the founding of the Duma (a parliament elected by virtual universal suffrage) under a Prime Minister. Witte, whose capitalist dash for growth had foundered upon the sea of trouble he sought to avoid (war), was named Prime Minister.

  For Rachmaninoff, success as an operatic and concert conductor seemed hollow in the face of the worsening political situation. He was preoccupied with other matters. The two operas were premièred on January 11th/24th, 1906, and were repeated four times, but Chaliapin, who Rachmaninoff had in mind when writing the works, did not sing them. Although he appeared the previous season in a revival of Aleko, and sight-read the new operas brilliantly at rehearsal, some disagreement or another caused him not to undertake the rôles. Chaliapin’s withdrawal from the cast upset Rachmaninoff and relations between the two men remained cool for several months. Nor was this the only casting problem. The original Francesca, Antonina Nazhdanova, also withdrew, although she later admitted her action was a “thoughtless, tactless and brainless step”. Her successor also withdrew. Rachmaninoff was thus forced to go to another soprano, the forty-three-year old Nadezhda Salina, who sang the rôle to his great satisfaction, but she later said, with disarming candour, that she looked too old for the part.

  Revolutionary crowds on Bloody Sunday (9th January 1905) march on the Winter Palace in St Petersburg.

  Although the general strike had ended and work more or less resumed, the militant demands of the Bolshoi staff, including technicians, seamstresses and ushers as well as the musicians, bred dissatisfaction. Rachmaninoff decided to resign at the end of the season. Serge Koussevitsky, in a well-publicised diatribe, also resigned, but he carried little weight. His imminent marriage meant he no longer had to play in the orchestra to earn a living. A revival of Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar was almost brought to a standstill when lines entreating sacrifice for the Tsar threw the audience into pandemonium, and subsequent performances could only continue with a military contingent in the auditorium. In the St Petersburg Opera performance of Boris Godunov the revolution scene had to be deleted, and Rimsky-Korsakov was dismissed from his post at the Conservatory. In protest, Glazunov and Liadov resigned along with others. The Conservatory was closed, and Rimsky-Korsakov took private pupils, among them Igor Stravinsky. In Moscow Taneyev resigned, siding with the pupils against Safonoff’s dictatorial methods and reactionary policies. The Moscow Conservatory was also closed, and Safonoff went to America where he became music director of the New York Philharmonic.

  It was clear to Rachmaninoff that he could no longer remain in such circumstances. It is also clear from the historical background that his operas stood little chance. With the threat of industrial action, the changes of the casts, and other troubles, it is a wonder the operas managed to be performed at all. Rachmaninoff tended his resignation on the day of the premières but the director, Teliakovsky, managed to persuade him to defer his decision until the end of the season.

  The two operas, similar in some respects, differ in others; their playing time (63 minutes) is identical, and the division into three sections is common to both. The vocal writing is rich and characterful (although the libretti makes characterisation difficult) and Rachmaninoff’s treatment of the two different subjects is more psychological than descriptive: he shows a deep insight into the motives of the characters, and the orchestral writing is magnificent. Those who doubt Rachmaninoff’s ability as an operatic composer should study the orchestration of these works; in this regard it is difficult to name his superior. Rachmaninoff shows a command of his task which is quite outstanding in the early years of the century.

  The operas have not entered the standard repertory for reasons which have nothing to do with the worth of the music. In the West, few opera houses perform Russian works; double-bills of short operas almost always mean poor receipts; The Miserly Knight demands an all-male cast, which few opera houses can successfully accommodate; Francesca da Rimini lacks readily identifiable protagonists, and the chorus parts are sparse — and therefore expensive. Both operas are in their own ways masterpieces, and it is a great pity they are neglected, for Rachmaninoff might easily have become one of this century’s greatest operatic composers on the basis of these works. The advance on Aleko is startling: if he had had the chance to continue there is no telling what he might have achieved. His sympathy for the voice was inherent; his grasp of orchestral colour was individual and superbly judged; he was an experienced man of the theatre. It is a tragedy that outside events forced him to change direction and anyone who thinks of Rachmaninoff’s three operas as curiosities by a composer who was essentially a pianist, had better think again.

  After the season ended he decided to leave. Even an offer of the Directorship (although an indication of the esteem in which he was held) failed to disuade him. He decided to take his family abroad for a holiday but during their few months in Italy their sojourn was marred by a recurring illness which struck Irina. However, Rachmaninoff must have been encouraged by the operas, for he wrote to his old friend Slonov requesting his collaboration on a new opera, based on Flaubert’s Salammbo. He was by all accounts enchanted with Italy, but he expressed concern about his future. He became homesick, and first Natalia and then again Irina fell ill, the child so seriously that he wrote to Morozov:

  … You cannot imagine how weak she is … of that healthy girl only a memory is left. It is hard to describe how we have suffered …

  Salammbo remained unwritten. Three weeks later Rachmaninoff had had enough: Irina was not improving and their doctor was also due to go abroad. Rachmaninoff learned of the strikes by the Russian railway workers: he doubted they would reach Moscow safely. They decided to go to Ivanovka, away from the troubles, once Irina was better. She recovered completely and at Ivanovka he wrote the fifteen songs Opus 26, which he dedicated to the Kerzins, the sponsors of his orchestral concerts. Th
e Bolshoi again offered a lucrative contract and the Kerzins wanted him for a new concert series. He received a third offer for another orchestral series, but in August Jurgenson told him things were so uncertain no one could guarantee anything. He had to decide, as he received an offer from America as well: he determined to cancel all his Russian engagements, refuse all others, and go abroad for peace and quiet and safety.

  6 Widening Horizons

  In November, 1906, the Rachmaninoff family left Russia for Dresden. Apart from the songs, Opus 26, he had also written that year an Italian Polka for piano duet, no doubt as a memento of their Italian visit, which literally became one of his and Natalia’s party pieces. Dresden was chosen for a number of reasons. The first was freedom from the troubles in metropolitan Russia; secondly to find a congenial atmosphere which would enable both him to have the relaxed background in which his work could be written and his family could lead a contented life. He heard, or so he disclosed in a letter written shortly after their arrival, that it was not an expensive city, but he complained about the high price of food. The rent of the house they took, a six-roomed two-storey dwelling named Garden Villa on Sidonienstrasse 6, was very reasonable and they settled down quickly and happily. They kept very much to themselves and Rachmaninoff wrote to Slonov:

  … I work a great deal and I feel very well. In my old age this kind of life pleases me greatly and at present suits me …

  The reference to “my old age” — he was then thirty-three — has to be taken lightly, of course, but they had been through some trying circumstances in their two years of marriage. No sooner had they arrived in Dresden than Sergei began a number of large-scale compositions which he worked on simultaneously. He also prepared editions of scenes from the two recent operas, which were to be performed in concert version by Chaliapin, with Alexander Siloti conducting. This did much to heal the breach of a year before. Rachmaninoff approached Slonov with a new request for an operatic libretto. After abandoning Salammbo, he asked for a text to be fashioned from Maeterlinck’s play Monna Vanna. This was supplied and he began work immediately, finishing Act I in piano score by April 15th, and drafting ideas for Act II. He had no trouble with this libretto being short on words, as that for Francesca had been, for he felt it necessitated shortening. However, he learned the rights for operatic use of Maeterlinck’s play had been granted to Henri Février, who had already begun work on his version. Rachmaninoff had no alternative but to postpone all work on the opera.