Top Songs By Sergei Rachmaninoff
More albums from Sergei Rachmaninoff
![Listen to Romantic Extreme, Vol. 2: Storm of the Heart (Chopin, Liszt, and other composers) [2025] by Gerardo Taube Horowitz](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music221/v4/a4/2f/60/a42f6073-0f87-4f04-62aa-ad9e39c806e7/5063766491210_cover.jpg/1380x1380bb.webp "Listen to Romantic Extreme, Vol. 2: Storm of the Heart (Chopin, Liszt, and other composers) [2025] by Gerardo Taube Horowitz")
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Popular Music Videos
![Watch Rachmaninov 2nd Piano Concerto (II. Adagio sostenuto) [Arr. for Cello, harp and Orchestra] music video by HAUSER & London Symphony Orchestra](/mkimage/image/thumb/Video113/v4/f2/26/d0/f226d0cd-87b7-1f1e-2f1d-9e4cf237a3d9/8864485670590101VIC.jpg/575x575mv.webp "Watch Rachmaninov 2nd Piano Concerto (II. Adagio sostenuto) [Arr. for Cello, harp and Orchestra] music video by HAUSER & London Symphony Orchestra")
![Watch Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 (II. Adagio Sostenuto) [Arr. for Cello, Harp, and Orchestra] music video by HAUSER, London Symphony Orchestra & Robert Ziegler](/mkimage/image/thumb/Video114/v4/c4/dd/85/c4dd851e-11d8-c0a7-c60a-a1f3f5d4a8f7/8864486878870102.jpg/575x575mv.webp "Watch Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 (II. Adagio Sostenuto) [Arr. for Cello, Harp, and Orchestra] music video by HAUSER, London Symphony Orchestra & Robert Ziegler")
About Sergei Rachmaninoff
Hometown
Staraya Russa, Russia
Born
1873
Genre
Classical
Rachmaninoff excelled as a conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer famous for his ripely melodious, wistful strain of late Romanticism. Born in 1873, his earliest formative experience was hearing the bells of St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod. Their sound informs several of his works, not least the tolling opening of his Piano Concerto No. 2. After a shaky start, his musical studies improved once his talent was recognized at the Moscow Conservatory by Tchaikovsky protégé Arensky. Rachmaninoff took his exams a year early and graduated aged 19 with the highest possible marks. Shortly afterwards, he wrote the Prelude in C-Sharp Minor (1892), which became his regular encore as a touring pianist. As a composer, Rachmaninoff suffered blows that reduced his creativity: the poorly performed 1897 premiere of his First Symphony, which resulted in a three-year creative block; the October Revolution of 1917, which forced him to leave his homeland and lead a more-or-less itinerant existence between the U.S. and Western Europe. His pre-Revolutionary masterpieces include his Second and Third Piano Concertos (1901, 1909), and the soulful and consoling Second Symphony (1907). The relative failure of his Fourth Concerto (1926) led to another creative hiatus, eventually broken with the Variations on a Theme of Corelli for solo piano (1931), followed by 1934’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra with its seductive Andante cantabile variation. His final work, Symphonic Dances (1940), looks back at Russia with both nostalgia and bitterness, including a vengeful quotation from his choral All-Night Vigil (1915). He died of cancer in Beverly Hills in 1943.
Influenced by Sergei RachmaninoffSergei Rachmaninoff has influenced the music of Elohim, George Gershwin, Richard Addinsell and more.
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