As the train pulled into the Kursk and Nizhni-Novgorod Station in the centre of Moscow, two miles East of the Kremlin, the city must have appeared to Sergei a very different place from St Petersburg. There to meet him was his aunt Julia, Alexander’s mother, for his first few days in Moscow were to be spent at her home.
The sights and activity in the ill-paved streets of Moscow crowded in on his mind, with little time for regret. It was all too new, too different, too interesting a place for a young boy to mope, but no sooner had he arrived than he was taken to Nikolai Zverev, at whose apartment on Ruzheyni Pereulok he was to stay.
At the time of Sergei’s first studies with him, Zverev was 53, but looked older. His apartment was large and he shared it with his sister Anna. The pupils who studied with Zverev lived in but there were never more than three at a time. They were chosen from the elite of the Conservatory pupils, not necessarily because they came from rich families: those pupils of Zverev who were from poor circumstances were taught and maintained by him free. His income came from those families who could afford to pay, and from his Conservatory fees.
To Sergei, at home in a easy-going atmosphere, it must have seemed like a prison. He shared a large bedroom with the two other young pupils, Mikhail Pressman and Leonid Maksimov. The three boys shared two grand pianos and, apart from their lessons at the Conservatory, they each had to practise for three hours daily in the apartment. Although Zverev was frequently out, either at the Conservatory or visiting his many private pupils, often until ten in the evening, his sister Anna made sure the boys were kept hard at it. Practice began at six a.m. so they had to rise earlier. Zverev frequently enquired from the professors at the Conservatory as to his pupils progress in other subjects, and woe betide them if they had been slack.
Zverev’s authority over his pupils did not end there. He was concerned that they should also acquire the airs and graces of dignified living. After they had successfully completed their initial terms at the apartment Zverev ensured that they attended the latest plays, concerts, opera, and on occasion, the better restaurants. To Zverev, the social graces were an important part of his pupils’ education, and the visits made a welcome respite for the boys from the rigours at home. In addition to this care for the boys’ social education, Zverev frequently entertained important musicians and visiting artists at home. The boys were sometimes invited to these dinner parties, and after dinner they were required to play the piano for the distinguished guests. Apart from the experience these occasions afforded the boys of playing before an audience, the opportunity of meeting a whole succession of great artists, in a relaxed and pleasant setting, was invaluable. In no other way could Sergei have met such famous musicians as old Dubuque (who doubtless regaled the boys with stories of his meeting with Beethoven in 1823), Anton and Nicholas Rubinstein, the Tchaikovsky brothers (Peter and Modest), and his cousin Alexander who was already an important musician.
Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894), one of whose pupils was Tchaikovsky, was a renowned virtuoso pianist. In this painting by L. Pasternak, Tolstoy can be clearly recognised among the circle of admirers.
This was the world into which Sergei had been thrown. It says much for his inner strength of character that he adapted to it very quickly, with a dramatic improvement in his piano technique, so much so that when Anton Rubinstein visited Moscow to conduct the hundredth performance of his opera, The Demon, and heard a recital by the most outstanding Conservatory pupils, both Rachmaninoff (who was then in his first year with Zverev) and Josef Lhévinne (another highly gifted student, who did not lodge with Zverev) played for him: Sergei’s piece was Bach’s A minor English Suite.
For the first year with Zverev, the boys studied only the piano. They played four-hand arrangements of orchestral and chamber music, which was the usual way, as Edison’s phonograph was in its infancy, of getting to know the classics intimately. Sergei’s composing instinct must have been aroused by the opportunity to study great music in detail. By the end of his first year with Zverev, Sergei’s musical ability had improved almost out of all recognition. He attended Anton Rubinstein’s series of “Historical Recitals” (which made an indelible impression), and in Moscow the first performance, on March 11th 1886, of a new symphony by Tchaikovsky, Manfred, Opus 58, given by the orchestra of the Russian Music Society conducted by Max Erdmannsdorfer. In this composition, rather more so than in the Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky uses a motto theme with great subtlety. It could well have made a deep impression on Sergei. The Conservatory heard reports of the first performance, in London, on May 19th, of another motto theme symphony: Saint-Saëns’s Third, in C minor, dedicated to Liszt, Alexander’s old teacher, conducted by Saint-Saëns himself. Liszt was touched by the dedication, but he passed away, less than three months after the première, on July 31st.
Tchaikovsky received an honorary doctorate at Cambridge in 1893.
Zverev took the boys to the Crimea for the summer in May 1886, not so much for a holiday but to ensure that they studied harmony and theory with Zverev’s fellow-Conservatory professor, Ladukhin, so that they would be well-prepared for the new academic year starting in the autumn. Having completed their first year concentrating exclusively on the piano, the boys would now enter the harmony class of Anton Arensky at the Conservatory, while still living at Zverev’s apartment, with its additional practice and strict discipline.
During the summer Sergei, now a highly proficient pianist, started his first attempt at original composition, or rather, transcription. The score of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony had just been published by Jurgenson, and Sergei began to make a piano-duet arrangement of the work. In many ways this was the kind of practical musicianship which the boy needed to supplement his piano lessons and the harmony course with Professor Ladukhin.
Towards the end of 1886 the transcription was completed, after the boys had returned to Moscow and joined Arensky’s harmony class. Zverev arranged for Sergei and his fellow-boarder, Mikhail Pressman, to play the transcription of Manfred to the composer himself at the apartment. Tchaikovsky was probably impressed by the musicianship of the 13-year-old boy, who in turn must have been proud of meeting his musical idol on more equal terms. Whether we would be impressed with Sergei’s effort must remain unanswered, for this first piece of original work by Rachmaninoff is lost.
The boys returned to the Crimea the following summer, 1887, and Mikhail Pressman recalled that during one of their visits Rachmaninoff composed his first original pieces:
… when we were alone, he called me to the piano and began to play. ‘Do you know what this is?’, he asked. ‘No’, I said, ‘I don’t’. ‘And how do you like this pedal point in the bass against this chromatic progression in the upper register?’. I nodded satisfaction. ‘I composed it myself’, he said proudly, ‘and I dedicate it to you’.
This piece, whatever it was, has apparently not survived either for Pressman’s description does not fit any of Rachmaninoff’s early pieces. A further reminiscence by Pressman gives another insight into the musical training of the boys. As well as issuing versions of orchestral works for piano duet, some publishers also made available transcriptions for eight hands at two pianos, and Zverev would engage a fourth pianist to join the boys for these. Sometimes it would be Madame Beloposkaya, but Pressman recalls an occasion when another Zverev pupil from the Conservatory, Semeon Samuelson, joined them to play before Taneyev, then Director of the Conservatory. Taneyev was astonished when the boys marched to the pianos to play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony — without music. Taneyev asked where the music was: according to Pressman, he almost jumped from the chair.
‘They play by heart’, replied Zverev calmly, his eyes looking upwards.
After the performance, with Taneyev still muttering, ‘… how is it possible?… to play by heart…’, Zverev ordered an encore: the scherzo from Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony.
Red Square, Moscow, as it was during Rachmaninoff’s student days in the city.
Doubtless encouraged by Tchaikovsky’s reception of the duet version of Manfred, and fired by the study of the score and his new lessons with Arensky, Rachmaninoff completed his first orchestral work, a Scherzo in D minor, in February, 1887. It is likely he intended this to be part of a complete symphony, possibly using Manfred as a model, for there is a connection between the scherzo of Tchaikovsky’s work and Rachmaninoff’s piece in the light and delicate writing for woodwind and strings. However, Tchaikovsky’s scherzo ends with one of his most magical codas, whereas Rachmaninoff’s ends with a sudden loud chord. For a first attempt at orchestration it is remarkably assured and successful: Rachmaninoff had obviously learned much and was unafraid to commit himself to paper quickly, for the score bears the dates February 5th/18th — 21st/March 5th. Rachmaninoff never heard the work: its première took place in Moscow, under Nikolai Anosov, on November 2nd 1945. On January 29th 1887, at Lodz in Russian-dominated Poland, Arthur Rubinstein (no relation to the Rubinstein brothers) was born.
In the spring of 1887 Rachmaninoff composed a short piano piece, which was also lost. In 1934 he re-wrote it from memory, for publication in a book of recollections. The 14-year-old now felt the need for his Opus l’, and during the Zverev party’s summer holiday in the Crimea in 1887 he probably composed the Four Piano Pieces, which remained unpublished during his life-time. Shortly after the start of the new academic year in the autumn of 1887 he wrote a set of Three Nocturnes for piano.
Rachmaninoff was now in his element. His own compositions, coupled with his growing proficiency as a pianist and his increasing musical knowledge, were moulding him into an excellent musician. Under the watchful eye of Zverev he made good progress in other subjects and, away from his family, he must have felt much more self-confident than when he first arrived in Moscow. For the Easter holiday in 1888 Zverev allowed him to visit another of his aunts, Vavara Satina, the wife of Alexander Satin, and the sister of his absconded father. He met his cousins one of whom, Natalia, also showed a strong musical character. Sergei, now a self-assured young man of 15, recognised a kindred spirit in Natalia and returned to the Conservatory for the final term, enrolling in the class of his cousin, Alexander Siloti, who had joined the faculty of the senior department.
It was becoming clear to his professors that Rachmaninoff possessed a genuine gift for composition and consequently he was allowed to join Taneyev’s counterpoint class at the start of the new academic year, while remaining in Siloti’s class, and still lodging at Zverev’s. Rachmaninoff planned an opera, Esmerelda, based on Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris. It remained unfinished, but the Introduction to Act I and fragments of Act III exist in a piano score dated October 17th/30th 1888. The stimulus of working under Taneyev was heightened by his fellow-pupils: among them was Alexander Scriabin, fifteen months older than Sergei, a native of Moscow and, like Rachmaninoff, an outstanding pianist. Scriabin was a member of Safonoff’s class, as were Pressman and Josef Lhévinne, and he became firm friends with Rachmaninoff. Apart from the pupils’ qualities, the class must have been stimulating owing to Taneyev himself. Rachmaninoff first met him at Zverev’s, and Scriabin had studied with him privately before joining the Conservatory class. Taneyev’s knowledge was legendary: a pupil of Tchaikovsky, he soon outstripped his master with the result that later it was Tchaikovsky who took lessons from him. Taneyev, a Muscovite, shared the aims of Balakirev and his followers, but disagreed with ‘The Five’ on the methods by which those aims were to be achieved: he insisted on a thorough musical education rather than the musical primitivism advocated by Balakirev, and his personal bearing made a great impression on his pupils. When he died suddenly in 1915 at the age of 58 Rachmaninoff wrote an obituary, describing the man:
Sergei Ivanovitch Taneyev
… Through his personal example Taneyev taught us how to live, how to work, and even to speak, because he had his own ‘Taneyev way’ of speaking — concise, clear, and to the point. He only said what was necessary. This man never uttered superfluous words. He seemed to me to be the personification of ‘Truth on Earth’ which Pushkin’s Salieri rejected …
In musical Russia the event of 1889 was the St Petersburg visit of Neumann’s Opera Company, who performed Wagner’s Ring under Karl Muck. The performances were attended by a noted Russian bass Feodor Stravinsky whose son, Igor, was then seven years old.
The liberating influence of his fellow-students directed Rachmaninoff towards composition, but Zverev thought differently. He trained Rachmaninoff as a pianist and he was an outstanding pupil. To dilute this great talent into composition was unacceptable to Zverev, especially when Rachmaninoff complained he could not compose because living at Zverev’s apartment meant sharing the piano and workroom. Zverev took this complaint as a personal insult: a quarrel blew up, an almost inevitable consequence of the conflict between Zverev’s severe manner and Rachmaninoff’s adolescent assertion of independence. For a month, relations between the two smouldered but neither was willing to give way. It was clear Rachmaninoff would have to leave, and Zverev took him to the house of his Aunt Varvara Satina explaining that it was impossible for Rachmaninoff to remain at the apartment. Rachmaninoff left the following day.
Apart from the deep musical influence which Zverev exerted upon his pupils, Rachmaninoff was also influenced in other ways by the four years he spent with Zverev. People who knew both men commented on the resemblance of their manner and attitude towards people. Although Rachmaninoff was not dictatorial as Zverev was, in later life his aloof and distant manner immediately struck people on first meeting him. This doubtless stemmed from his time with Zverev and his studies with Taneyev, for it was in marked contrast to the easy-going boy he had been before he went to Moscow.
His mother, still in St Petersburg, suggested he return home and finish his courses at the Conservatory there. It was a tempting suggestion, for Rimsky-Korsakov and Anton Rubinstein were resident professors. Rachmaninoff refused: his musical training had been concentrated in Moscow, and he felt part of the rivalry between the Conservatories.
A fellow-student, Mikhail Slonov, put Rachmaninoff up for a while and then Aunt Varvara made room in her Moscow home for Sergei for several months. It was the perfect solution and, as the new academic year began, to the composition lessons with Taneyev were now added fugal studies with Arensky.
Nicolai Zverev, the piano teacher.
This change of environment with his own room gave him the first chance for peace and quiet, and the daily encounter with domestic feminine company, coupled with the final stages of his Conservatory studies began to unleash the music that was welling up in Rachmaninoff’s mind. He wrote two pieces for string quartet (a Romance in G minor, and a Scherzo in D major), which were not performed in their quartet version until October 1945 in Moscow by the Beethoven Quartet. They were heard in another version, possibly for string orchestra, in Moscow on February 24th/March 9th 1891, conducted by Safonoff who succeeded Taneyev as Director of the Conservatory in 1889. In November Rachmaninoff began sketches for a Piano Concerto in C minor. He dedicated the string quartet pieces to Alexander Siloti and possibly the encouragement he received from his other cousins at his new home prompted his first songs, which date from the spring of 1890. These songs were preceded by a contrapuntal exercise, an unaccompanied six-part motet Deus Meus, doubtless calling on the deep impressions made during his frequent church visits with his grandmother. The first of the three songs. ‘At the Gate of the Holy Place’, dated April 29th/May 12th, he dedicated to his friend Mikhail Slonov (himself a singer), in gratitude for the practical help he gave Rachmaninoff following the break with Zverev (the words have some significance in this context). The second, ‘I Will Tell You Nothing’ followed two days later. The third song, ‘Again You Leapt, My Heart’ is not dated, but could have been written at this time.
At the end of the summer term, Rachmaninoff travelled with his relatives to their country estate at Ivanovka, in the Tambov district south-east of Moscow. They were joined by the Silotis and another family of cousins, the three Skalon sisters, Natalia, Ludmila, and Vera. The countryside on this big estate exerted a powerful influence on Rachmaninoff, who came to love the place dearly. Sergei must have been a charming guest at the house-parties during the summer holiday, and surrounded by so many attractive young musical girls, the 17-year-old came into his element. While at Ivanovka he composed a Romance for cello and piano dated August 6th/19th, which he dedicated to the youngest of the Skalon sisters Vera, and for all three he wrote a Waltz (for six hands at one piano) nine days later. During the summer he received his first commission, from Tchaikovsky’s music publishers Jurgenson, to make a piano-duet transcription of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty ballet. Alexander Siloti had been approached to undertake the task, but because he was unable to accept he suggested the commission be given to Rachmaninoff whose work he would supervise. It was a golden opportunity for the young composer, who adored Tchaikovsky’s music. Rachmaninoff’s commission recalled the earlier transcription of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred, for Rachmaninoff began an orchestral work on the same subject in October 1890, but never completed it, and what music he did write has been lost. Tchaikovsky had just met the young German musician Fritz Scheel for the first time and, later that month, Rachmaninoff composed another song ‘In the Silence of the Secret Night’, dated October 17th/30th, which was incorporated into the later Six Songs, Opus 4, of 1893. This song is Rachmaninoff’s first to be published with an Opus number: it is dedicated, like the cello-and-piano Romance of two months previously, to Vera Skalon, for she became Rachmaninoff’s favourite among the three sisters — rather too much so for her mother’s liking especially in view of the song’s text. She forbade the pair to write to each other after the holiday.
In spite of Rachmaninoff’s apparent indifference towards the St Petersburg school, there is a distinct influence between the final section of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor of 1883 and the first movement of a new Piano Concerto which Rachmaninoff began during the spring of 1890, in F-sharp minor.
Nor are these all of Rachmaninoff’s compositions at this time. In 1890, he began three versions of Boris’s monologue, Ti otche patriarkh (which were completed the following year), and two versions of Pimen’s monologue Escho odno posledneye skazan’ye as well as a fragment, in two versions also, of Arbenin’s monologue Noch’provedennaya bez sna from Lermontov’s poem, Maskarade.
It was a busy time: he took a position as a teacher in a class for choirmasters, and visited his mother in St Petersburg for Christmas when he saw Tchaikovsky’s opera, The Queen of Spades. His mother should have been proud of her son, but the two did not really get on: the years in Moscow had changed him from the carefree boy into a serious, somewhat aloof, young man. Possibly the real reason for his St Petersburg trip was the chance it afforded him to visit the Skalon family, particularly Vera. Early in January 1891, he returned to Moscow, to find everyone talking about the shortage of food. In 1890-91, European Russia faced a full-scale famine. Rachmaninoff’s mother moved into a smaller apartment on the Fontanka in St Petersburg, and a possible source of friction was her demand that Sergei do something to help her financially. For the furriers in St Petersburg, the Bruskins, it meant there were fewer people able to afford their warm winter clothes: they decided to emigrate to the U.S.A., and in May they sold up and left, with their daughter Rose, then fifteen years old.
They were not the only Russians to go to New York that year: following the successful première of The Queen of Spades Tchaikovsky accepted an invitation to visit New York, doubtless told of its life and vitality by Anton Rubinstein, to conduct at the opening of the new Carnegie Hall which the millionaire philanthropist Andrew Carnegie had endowed.
Rachmaninoff was not badly affected by the shortage of food: almost immediately on his return from St Petersburg he began work on a Russian Rhapsody, in minor for two pianos,1 written in only two days, January 12th-14th (25th-27th). He showed it to his friend Maksimov, who had been a fellow-Zverev pupil. But Zverev still bore Rachmaninoff a grudge and, hearing of the planned performance by these two, forbade Maksimov to participate. Rachmaninoff turned to another friend, Josef Lhévinne, and they premièred the Rhapsody in October that year in Moscow. In February, Rachmaninoff made his debût as a conductor. He directed the Moscow Conservatory Chorus in the first performance of the six-part motet Deus Meus, and later that month he heard the new version of the pieces for string quartet from 1889, when Safonoff conducted them in Moscow on February 24th/March 9th. Hearing his own music may have prompted him to take up the Concerto again, the first movement of which he completed the year before, for shortly afterwards he wrote to Natalia Skalon telling her the second movement was finished and he was hoping to write down the finale soon and spend the summer orchestrating it. In April he wrote two more songs: the first, a French setting of a poem by Edouard Pailleron, C’était en Avril, dated, appropriately enough, April 1st/14th, and, later in the month, “Twilight has fallen” on April 22nd/May 5th.
The following month a crisis arose at the Moscow Conservatory. Since Safonoff became director in 1889 relations between him and Alexander Siloti had become strained, and in May 1891 Siloti resigned. Quite apart from family considerations this meant Rachmaninoff had to change teachers for his final year, and this he was loth to do. With great daring he approached Safonoff and asked if he could take his final piano examinations one year early, which meant qualifying within a month. Safonoff agreed and the exceptional training and ability Rachmaninoff possessed now came into their own. He was required to prepare the first movement of a Chopin Sonata and a complete Beethoven Sonata. Much later, a fellow-pupil, Alexander Goldenweiser, recalled Rachmaninoff’s talent:
… Rachmaninoff’s musical gifts, even apart from his creative ability, surpassed any others I have ever met, bordering on the marvellous, like those of Mozart in his youth. The speed with which he memorised new compositions was remarkable. I remember how Siloti, with whom we were both studying at the time, told Rachmaninoff to learn the well-known Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel. This was on a Wednesday, and it was but three days later that Rachmaninoff played them like a master. It was his practice to memorise everything he heard, no matter how complicated it was …
With this formidable technique Rachmaninoff knew what he was doing by making his request to Safonoff. On May 24th/June 6th he took the final piano examinations, and graduated with honours.
Rachmaninoff at the time of his graduation from the Moscow Conservatory.
His exertions demanded a holiday, but instead of visiting his family in St Petersburg he accompanied Siloti to Ivanovka, where he finally completed the Piano Concerto in F sharp minor on July 6th/19th. He dedicated it to Siloti but he had to rush to finish the score. Once it was written he relaxed with a short piano piece, a Prelude in F, dated July 20th/August 2nd, preceding it with another song “Morning” which was also incorporated into the Opus 4 set. Rachmaninoff had had an encouraging year thus far, but he soon received a setback. The demands on his time cramming for his finals had taken their toll of his work in making the piano-duet transcription of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. The composer was unhappy with much of Rachmaninoff’s work and Siloti was obliged to make rather more corrections than he would have liked to pacify Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninoff’s piano prelude was also later recomposed for a cellist friend, but in August he travelled to Znamenskoe to visit his father’s mother, the widow of old Arkady Rachmaninoff. He may well have begun a Symphony in D minor here (the Scherzo of four years before was not part of this work), but while swimming in the river Matïr he contracted a feverish chill which worsened on his return to Ivanovka. By the end of September the one-movement Symphony was finished in full score. It is dated September 28th/October 11th: eight days previously he completed another piece for the Skalon sisters, a Romance in A major to complement the Waltz of the previous summer.
The fever troubled him intermittently. It delayed his return to Moscow, so he began the first term of the new year late. He moved into lodgings with his friend Slonov but shortly afterwards the fever returned with redoubled force. Rachmaninoff was moved to another house and confined to bed almost until the end of October, and even when he recovered sufficiently to get up he was not his usual self. He felt depressed but gradually improved, and by the end of the year was at work on a new orchestral piece, a symphonic poem Prince Rostislav. This is based on an early work of Count Alexei Tolstoy (a distant cousin of Leo). The score is dated December 9th/22nd-15th/28th and the work is dedicated to “My dear professor Anton Stepanovitch Arensky”, who had earlier agreed to Rachmaninoff taking his final composition examinations one year early in 1892.
In spite of the completion and dedication of the work this, too, was never performed during Rachmaninoff’s lifetime, being premiered in Moscow on November 2nd 1945, conducted by Nikolai Anosov. Hearing the work today, there seems little cause for regret: however superb a pianist Rachmaninoff had become this was not then matched by a similar talent in composition.
Arensky’s agreement that he could take his finals in theory and composition one year early meant that Rachmaninoff had his work cut out: he had to submit a symphony, some vocal works and an opera. The one-movement Symphony was finished. It begins with a slow introduction before a flowing Allegro moderato forms the basis of the rest of the work in a mixture of 12/8 and 9/8 metres. His composition, following Prince Rostislav, continued apace: early in 1892 he completed his first Trio Elégiaque in G minor between January 18th/31st and January 21st/February 3rd. The first performance was given in Moscow nine days after its completion by Rachmaninoff with David Krein (violin) and Anatole Brandukov (cello). Brandukov became a friend and collaborator, for at the same concert he and Rachmaninoff also premièred the composer’s Opus 2, Two Pieces for cello and piano, dedicated to Anatole, the first being a recomposition of the Prelude in F, the second entitled Oriental Dance. Like the Symphony, the Trio is in one movement, and little did Rachmaninoff realise how soon it would be before he wrote a second.
Anton Stepanovitch Arensky, 1861-1906 (seated centre) with three graduates from his 1892 composition class — Conus, Morozov and Rachmaninoff (right).
Another song followed, dated February 26th/March 10th, “Oh No, I Beg You, Forsake Me Not” which was incorporated into the Opus 4 songs the following year, but the most important event of the first few months was the première, on March 17th/30th, of the first movement of the Piano Concerto. This was at a student concert conducted by Safonoff, and a fellow-pupil, Mikhail Bukinik, later described the première:
… Safonoff, who ordinarily conducted the compositions of the students, would brutally and unceremoniously change anything he wished in these scores, cleaning them up and cutting parts to make them more playable. The student composers, happy to have their creative efforts performed … did not dare contradict Safonoff, and readily agreed to his comments and alterations. But Safonoff had a hard time with Rachmaninoff. This student not only refused categorically to accept alterations but also had the audacity to stop Safonoff (as conductor), pointing out his errors in tempo and nuance. This was obviously displeasing to Safonoff, but being intelligent, he understood an author’s rights, though a beginner, to make his own interpretation, and he tried to take the edge off any awkwardness. Besides, Rachmaninoff’s talent as a composer was so obvious, and his quiet self-assurance made such an impression on all, that even the omnipotent Safonoff had to yield…
Safonoff had not been Rachmaninoff’s tutor, but he was obviously as outstanding a teacher as Zverev and Siloti. Among those who passed through his hands were Lhévinne, Scriabin and Medtner. When Rachmaninoff came to the cadenza — a powerful, staggeringly brilliant and difficult section — Safonoff must have realised he was in the presence of a real composer. Although the Concerto was later extensively revised, the cadenza is virtually the same in both versions, giving us an insight into what Rachmaninoff was capable of at the age of 17.
Arensky, too, must have been pleased with his pupil’s work and with his decision to let Rachmaninoff graduate early: before the première, Rachmaninoff wrote to Natalia Skalon on February 18th/March 2nd:
… April 15th is the important day for me. On March 15th, they will give us the subject for a one-act opera. As you can see, I shall have to compose it, write it out and orchestrate it in one month. No mean task …
It was not, but it was not helped by an incident at Rachmaninoff’s lodgings. He was still sharing with Slonov but during his illness the previous winter he had stayed at the home of another Conservatory student, Yuri Sakhnovsky. Rachmaninoff’s father, Vasily, had turned up in Moscow and appealed to his son for help. Sergei could not turn his father away, and it was through Sakhnovsky’s help that Vasily was found a job and he moved in with his son and Slonov. When Rachmaninoff finally received the opera libretto, he dashed home to his lodgings impatient to begin. But his father had taken over the room containing the grand piano for the whole afternoon to entertain some acquaintances. Sergei was beside himself with frustration: he thought his father’s action would thwart his plans but when the guests left, Sergei seized on the opera as if possessed. The subject was Aleko, fashioned by Vladimir Nemirovitch-Danchenko from Pushkin’s poem The Gypsies (Tsïganï) which appeared in 1824. Nemirovitch-Danchenko felt it necessary to obscure the poem’s real message, that of freedom for the Bessarabian gypsies from tyranny, as such a story seemed a little too close to home for the authorities who had informants in every college. The story was reduced to a crime of passion.
Rachmaninoff wrote Aleko at white-heat: the composition took fifteen days, between March 21st/April 3rd-April 4th/17th, but because the libretto was received late the examination was postponed until May 7th/20th. The committee members were unanimous: Rachmaninoff was awarded the highest mark, and graduated with honours. A committee member was Zverev, who followed Rachmaninoff into the corridor, took him to one side, congratulated him and gave Sergei his own gold watch as a token. The watch remained with Rachmaninoff for the rest of his life and the breach was healed.
Ten days later, the recipients of the Gold Medals were announced: Rachmaninoff was awarded the Great Gold Medal, which had only been awarded twice before in the Conservatory’s history, with the title of “Free Artist”. One of the previous winners was Taneyev, and Rachmaninoff’s name was inscribed on the marble plaque under those of Taneyev and Koreschenko. The graduation concert took place on May 31st/June 13th, and afterwards Rachmaninoff left the Conservatory for the last time: his apprentice days were over and the nineteen-year-old composer now had to make his way in the world as a professional.
1 Although the Russian Rhapsody begins in E minor, it ends in G major. A cadenza for the first piano suggests it could have been originally intended for piano and orchestra.