![]() Here is what Rachmaninoff said about modern music: He was one of the last composers of the late Romantic era and was constantly being run over by the transition to the modern classical (atonal) music era. Rachmaninoff’s life as a composer had a lot of tension in it. ![]() Though that may sound like a lot, it is nothing compared to the work ethic of Franz Liszt – another piano-music genius who was both composer and pianist – who at one point in his life gave 400 performances a year. For a long time he had to make a living as a pianist, giving 60 concerts a year. Rachmaninoff left Russia in 1917 on the eve of the Soviet revolution and immigrated to the US. One of the early performances was conducted by Gustav Mahler. Rachmaninoff dedicated it to Polish pianist Joseph Hoffmann, who never performed it in public, saying it was “not for him.” Rachmaninoff was an incredibly gifted pianist, one of the best who ever lived, and thus he was the first to perform the concerto himself, in New York in 1909. ![]() This concerto is one of the most technically challenging pieces of music ever composed for piano. I grew up listening to his second piano concerto – it was “my concerto.” And then I watched the movie Shine with Geoffrey Rush and the third concerto became mine, too, so much mine that I’ve listened to it thousands of times (that is not an exaggeration). The first time I heard Sergey Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. ![]() “Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.” ― Sergei Rachmaninoff
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