Fritz Kreisler Photo: RCA.
It was a time of great prosperity for the United States: the Rachmaninoff recordings in 1929 clearly show the huge investment available for recordings (RCA were also recording Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic,1 and Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among others, at the same time).
The summer of 1929 found Rachmaninoff in Europe at a rented villa called Le Pavillon in the village of Clairfontaine, not far from where they stayed in the summer of 1925 at the time of Prince Volkonsky’s death. The new house, described by visitors as ‘château-like’, enabled Rachmaninoff and his family to re-create the kind of life they enjoyed at Ivanovka, away from the cares of the world. Alfred and Katherine Swan, whose description it was, left an evocative account of this idyllic scene:
Two portraits of Feodor Chaliapin by his son: left 1928, right 1932.
… The whole arrangement was very much like that of an old Russian estate. The park of Le Pavillon adjoined the summer residence of the President of France. A small gate opened into the vast hunting-grounds: pine-woods with innumerable rabbits. Rachmaninoff loved to sit under the pine-trees and watch the games and pranks of the rabbits …
Among the house guests were the Chaliapins, whose son Fedya, a talented painter, persuaded the Rachmaninoff family to participate in home-movies. Rachmaninoff was able to relax completely at Le Pavillon, but he was saddened by the news of the death of his mother in Novgorod in September 1929. The news of her death came too late for him to attend the funeral, even if he had been able to obtain the necessary permits, as he was himself undergoing medical treatment. The facial pain from which he suffered was now correctly diagnosed and eventually cured by a Parisian dental surgeon, Kostritsky, a fellow Russian.
The pattern of the forthcoming concert season had already been established in previous years. It opened with five appearances in Holland commencing on October 19th, and a more extended British tour, with fifteen concerts, including two London recitals and a concerto appearance with Albert Coates playing the Fourth Concerto. This was repeated in Paris under Jascha Horenstein, but the work still failed to appeal to audiences. By the time of Rachmaninoff’s visit to the United States at the beginning of 1930, the effects of the Wall Street Crash the previous October were beginning to make themselves felt. Rachmaninoff had lost money following the stock market collapse but the larger corporations, such as RCA, were able to survive the losses even though it meant a drastic re-appraisal of their commitments. For Rachmaninoff, RCA had every reason to continue their association with him. His first appearances in 1930 included a Carnegie Hall recital on February 15th, in which the Chopin E flat minor Sonata drew from W. J. Henderson in the New York Sun the following:
… For one listener this interpretation of the E flat minor Sonata — in which even the Funeral March was played differently — closed itself with a magisterial quod erat demonstrandum which left no ground for argument. The logic of the thing was impervious; the plan was invulnerable; the proclamation was imperial. There was nothing left for us but to thank our stars that we had lived when Rachmaninoff did and heard him, out of the divine might of his genius, re-create a masterpiece. It was a day of genius understanding genius. One does not often get the opportunity to be present when such forces are at work. But one thing must not be forgotten: there was no iconoclast engaged: Chopin was still Chopin …
This eulogy was not written by a critic to whom superlatives were commonplace: it shows that Rachmaninoff was at the height of his interpretive powers and explains why musical fulfilment was possible through his concert appearances. During the English tour towards the end of 1929, Rachmaninoff gave an interview to the Musical Times which was published in June 1930. This, together with Henderson’s review a few months before, shows how his thinking had changed over the years:
Rachmaninoff with his grand-daughter Sophie Volkonsky on board the Leviathan in February 1929.
… The older we get, the more we lose that divine self-confidence which is the treasure of youth, and the fewer are those moments when we believe that what we have done is good. We get lucrative contracts — more, in fact, than we can accept — but we are still longing for that inner satisfaction which is independent of outside success, and which we felt at the beginning of our career at the time of our troubles when success seemed far away.
Nowadays it very rarely happens to feel sincerely satisfied with myself, to feel that what I do is really a success. Such occasions stick in the memory for a long time — for nearly the rest of my life. I recollect the city where I felt this thrill of satisfaction last, and I remember all the details. I remember the concert hall, where everything seemed to me to be perfect that night — the lighting, the piano, the audience. Only on such nights do I feel happy and satisfied …
The Carnegie Hall concert in February was possibly one such occasion, for three days after the concert Rachmaninoff recorded the Sonata for RCA. He was obviously in top form, as the result is possibly his greatest recorded performance as a solo pianist. In addition, for each of the seven sides either the first or second takes were used. The set appeared unusually: four ten-inch 78 rpm records, with the E minor posthumous waltz as the fill-up. The Funeral March was obviously the focal point of the interpretation, for it was recorded out of sequence, the finale being recorded before the third movement. The most startling aspect of Rachmaninoff’s interpretation is the change of dynamics at the reprise of the march, fortissimo instead of Chopin’s pianissimo. The effect underlines the tragedy of the march, and other pianists have followed Rachmaninoff’s innovation, which was not a spur-of-the-moment whim but a deeply considered change.
While in the United States, Rachmaninoff missed the first English performance of the Three Russian Folk-Songs given by Sir Henry Wood in Liverpool on March 11th. The concert was broadcast by the recently-formed British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the work was sung in English, translated by Kurt Schindler. Rachmaninoff returned to Europe the following month, sailing direct to France, where they stayed again at Clairfontaine. During this holiday, Rachmaninoff was approached by two people: his old friend from Dresden Oskar von Reisemann, and an Englishman Richard Holt, who wished to publish his memoirs. He collected some material and sent it to them, but Holt died in London before his work could proceed. Reisemann, however, invited Rachmaninoff and his wife to join him at his home by Lake Lucerne. The Rachmaninoffs were so taken by the beauty of the place that they decided to make it their home. Rachmaninoff bought land on the Vierwaldstätter See at Hertenstein, near Lucerne, and commissioned a reputable firm of local architects and builders to put up plans and build the residence.
In spite of Rachmaninoff’s enthusiasm for the new villa to be built in Switzerland, in a closing paragraph in the Musical Times interview he revealed where his heart really lay:
“There is, however, a burden which age perhaps is laying on my shoulders. Heavier than any other, it was unknown to me in my youth. It is that I have no country. I had to leave the land where I was born, where I passed my youth, where I struggled and suffered all the sorrows of the young, and where I finally achieved success.
The whole world is open to me, and success awaits me everywhere. Only one place is closed to me, and that is my own country — Russia …”
Although Rachmaninoff meant that remark in a personal way, knowing from Vilshau and others that his latest works along with his earlier masterpieces were frequently performed in the U.S.S.R., within a few months of the interview was published even that link was closed.
1 Sokoloff had earlier conducted the Symphony in San Francisco, and later in Seattle, during his appointments with the orchestras of those cities.
1 to whom Rachmaninoff’s Opus 6 was dedicated.
1 The New York Philharmonic and the New York Symphony orchestras merged in 1928, to form the ‘Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York’
9 The Hectic Thirties
Towards the end of 1930 the Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore
visited the United States and, during a newspaper interview and in subsequent broadcasts, he spoke highly of the advances of the free education system which the Bolsheviks introduced into communist Russia. Tagore made the observation that a similar approach to India’s educational problems might bring about a similar rise in literacy in the sub-continent.
Whilst Tagore offered no comments on the political system under which this education prospered, his remarks appeared at a time when anti-Russian feeling was running very high. After Lenin’s death in 1924, a power-struggle ensued until Stalin emerged in December 1925 as the leader of a ruthless and severe regime. All traces of the old class-structure were eliminated, opposition was silenced, and Russia became economically self-sufficient. This meant a reign of terror against all dissidents and it was against this background that a group of Russian émigrés, stung by Tagore’s apparent sympathy with Stalin’s purges (although he had not supported such measures), invited Rachmaninoff to be cosignatory of a letter to the New York Times. It was published on January 15th, 1931, a scathing condemnation of the Stalinist regime. Rachmaninoff was never a political animal and, not wishing to offend his friends by refusing to sign the letter, he committed a serious error of judgement. It did not appear so at the time: the Stalinist regime well merited the criticism. But his action was based on a misunderstanding of Tagore’s remarks and, although the USA had severed diplomatic relations with Russia years before, the letter was not unheeded.
Two months later the Russian-born conductor Albert Coates (who left the country in 1917 and became a naturalised British subject) conducted The Bells in Moscow at the Conservatory. The press rose to the challenge and Rachmaninoff, his music, Balmont, Poe, and Albert Coates were all condemned. Ten days later an edict called for a ban on all performances of Rachmaninoff’s music in Russia. It was taken up, and his music disappeared from concert programmes.
However much Rachmaninoff became persona non grata in Russia, in the West his music was as popular as ever even though the economic conditions led to a fall in concert attendances and record sales. 1 RCA considered dropping several of their artists, including Horowitz, whose services were quickly snapped up by EMI, the giant record company recently formed by the merger of “His Master’s Voice” and Columbia. Following the Horowitz recording of Rachmaninoff’s G minor Prelude the previous December, EMI now put together Horowitz and Albert Coates in June 1931 to make the first recording of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto, with the London Symphony Orchestra. Although Horowitz recorded the work on two occasions later, in 1951 and 1978, the earliest performance clearly demonstrates his command of the Concerto. Horowitz’s 1931 performance is still unequalled, for not even Rachmaninoff phrased the first movement’s second subject with such pluperfect judgement and taste — although Rachmaninoff’s own conception is quite different from that of Horowitz — causing Rachmaninoff to exclaim that Horowitz was ‘the only player in the world of this piece.’ Some years later in 1942, at a concert in Pasadena, California, Rachmaninoff made his one and only appearance on stage after hearing another’s performance of his music, when he embraced Horowitz publicly following an irresistible performance of this Concerto.
Irresistible or not, Horowitz’s two earlier recordings both contain cuts in the Concerto which have been made by others, including Rachmaninoff. Following the somewhat cool reception of the Third Concerto in 1909, Rachmaninoff felt the structure could be improved by cuts, especially in the finale, which uses material from earlier movements. At his meeting with Horowitz in January 1928 Rachmaninoff again suggested the cuts, with which Horowitz concurred, anxious not to upset the composer. Today, however, most people feel the cuts to be unnecessary in an age familiar with the gigantic symphonies of Mahler and Bruckner, and prefer the work to be played complete, which is how Horowitz played it in January 1978 for his third recording (apart from two bars in the first movement cadenza), which commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of his United States debût. While Horowitz was in London for the recording with Albert Coates Rachmaninoff was also in Europe, where the two men met again, Rachmaninoff staying with his family at Clairfontaine. The circle of Russian friends was enhanced by a visit from Chaliapin, whose recording of the aria from Aleko made on November 11th 1929 in London, conducted by Lawrence Collingwood, had just been released by HMV. It is a deeply-moving performance, showing Chaliapin’s genius as clearly as the recordings of Rachmaninoff and Horowitz show theirs.
It was a busy summer for Rachmaninoff, for he began work on a long-postponed revision, that of the Second Sonata Opus 36. Writing about this revision Rachmaninoff compared it to Chopin’s Second Sonata which “lasts nineteen minutes — and it says everything”. By comparison his own Sonata appeared long and superfluous. In keeping with his willingness to cut passages from a few works written during the ‘Dresden’ period, Rachmaninoff’s revisions of the Sonata both lighten the texture and shorten the work, but even in its new form Rachmaninoff was never satisfied with it.
Another work which he treated with similar disdain, but which is in many ways the best of his extended works for solo piano, was the Variations on a Theme of Corelli Opus 42, completed on June 19th 1931. The work is dedicated to Fritz Kreisler who introduced Rachmaninoff to the theme, which is not in fact by Corelli. It is a traditional dance tune “La Folia”, used by Corelli as the theme for a set of variations for violin. Rachmaninoff’s twenty variations are grouped, as the earlier Chopin variations are, to form a large structure. They demand a fine pianist, but the piano writing is more linear than the heavily chordal textures of his earlier works. However much one is tempted to ascribe this rather increased astringency to a ‘new’ Rachmaninoff, clear presages of this style can be found in the remarkable Opus 39 Etudes-Tableaux and even more so in the finale of the Fourth Concerto. Apart from these unmistakable pointers, the tighter construction demonstrates that Rachmaninoff was not rehearsing the formulae of earlier decades. Regrettably the première which Rachmaninoff gave at the start of the new season (which began in the New World to enable him to travel to London for an important event in March 1932) was not a great success. This was in Montreal on October 12th. During the tour Rachmaninoff played the Variations many times: or rather selections from them. He sent a copy of the newly-published score to Medtner in December with a letter that shows he had lost none of his old tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecatory awareness:
Photo: RCA.
… I’ve played them about fifteen times but of these performances only one was good. The others were sloppy. I can’t play my own compositions; and it’s so boring; not once have I played these all in one continuity. I was guided by the coughing of the audience. Whenever the coughing increased I would skip the next variation. Whenever there was no coughing I would play then in proper order. In one concert, I don’t remember where — some small town — the coughing was so violent that I only played ten variations in all (out of twenty). My best record was set in New York where I played eighteen variations. However, I hope that you will play them all and won’t cough …
Although three variations are marked by Rachmaninoff as optional, the work can only make its proper effect if all are played. Rachmaninoff’s sensitivity was so great that he hardly ever gave this superb work its proper chance: no wonder its acceptance was lukewarm. And yet it was very possibly this lack of success (for this was the third work written after leaving Russia which had apparently failed) which discouraged him from writing any more music for solo piano. This is a tragedy for a Third Sonata, written in this style, would have been a truly remarkable work.
During this season, while the Respighi-orchestrated Etudes-Tableaux were being taken up, Rachmaninoff’s concert with the Minneapolis Orchestra could have proved disastrous had it not been for the skill and musicianship of a young conductor, Eugene Ormandy. Ormandy went to the United States from Hungary in 1921 aged 22, and became one of the first conductors to gain practical experience in broadcasting. As he had been one of the youngest students ever to have been awarded t
he Gold Medal of the Buda-Pest Academy of Music his credentials were impeccable, and his ability to deal with problems under pressure made him the obvious choice to stand in for the chief conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, Henri Verbruggen, who was indisposed. The Rachmaninoff concert included the Second Concerto and the Second Symphony. Ormandy took over at short notice, and during the Concerto’s performance, Rachmaninoff had a slip of memory. Ormandy’s nimble thinking quickly saved the situation, which was much appreciated by Rachmaninoff. This, said Ormandy, “made us friends for life.” Verbruggen’s illness forced him to resign from the Orchestra, who offered Ormandy the position of music director.
At one of his last appearances in America in 1931, Rachmaninoff gave the first performance at the Juilliard School of a piece written many years before. He met his cousin Siloti there, and the work was the ‘Oriental Sketch’ written on November 4th/17th, 1917 (at the same time as two other short pieces for piano). This proved so popular that Rachmaninoff included it in subsequent recitals. He also premièred, on November 20th, two more transcriptions: Kreisler’s Liebeslied and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee. Although the Rimsky-Korsakov piece had been recorded in April 1929 it was not released during Rachmaninoff’s lifetime, but the Ampico roll of it was.
The composer with his daughter Tatiana.
During December 1931 Rachmaninoff returned to Europe for the second part of the season, made notable by a performance of the Fourth Concerto in Berlin under Bruno Walter. In London on March 10th, Rachmaninoff accepted the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society after a concert in the Queen’s Hall, where he played the Third Concerto under Sir Henry Wood. After the presentation, which was made by the Duchess of Atholl, the Rachmaninoffs travelled first to Paris to see their family, and then to Hertenstein, where the villa was well advanced. They decided to name it Senar after their initials, Serge and Natalia Rachmaninoff. During this summer their second daughter Tatiana, then 24, announced her engagement to Boris Conus, the son of Julius Conus, and a nephew of Rachmaninoff’s class-mate of forty years earlier in Moscow. They married during the summer and settled in Paris.
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