Sergei Rachmaninoff, great Russian pianist and composer, was born in Oneg, district of Novgorod on April 1, 1873. His grandfather and father were both amateur pianists. His musical talents were discovered early and his parents took him to St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1882 and studied until 1885 under Demiansky.
He then went to the Moscow Conservatory to study with Nikolai Zverev (where Skryabin was a fellow pupil) , and his cousin Ziloti for piano and Taneyev and Arensky for composition. While in Moscow, he chanced to meet Tchaikovsky, who showed interst in his talent. Tchaikovsky was to have conducted his work, the symphonic fantasy The Rock, but he died before being able todo so (Rachmaninoff responded by writing an Elegiac Trio in his memory). About this time , he also wrote his famous Prelude in C-sharp minor at the age of 19. Rachmaninoff graduated as pianist in 1891, with honors, and as composer in 1892, receiving the Great Gold Medal for his examination composition - the opera Aleko, based on a poem by Pushkin.
During the ensuing years he composed piano pieces , songs and orchestral works, but the disastrous premiere in 1897 of his Symphony No,1, poorly conducted by Glazunov (it is said that Glazunov was drunk when he conducted this Symphony) , brought about a creative despair that wasn't dispelled until he sought medical help in 1900. He turned to a hypnotist, Dr Nikolai Dahl, who swung his watch in front of the composer and convinced him that his next piece would be world-famous. He went away and wrote this, dedicating it to the good doctor. Then he quickly composed his Second Piano Concerto. It was an immediate success with audiences, becoming the most popular concerto written this century.
In 1902 , he married his cousin Natalia Satin. From 1904-06 he conducted the Bolshoi , and from 1909-12 he was the vice-president of the Imperial Russian Music Society. In 1909 he made his first American tour as a pianist, for which he wrote the Piano Concerto no.3. Most of his upus was written by the time of the Russian revolution in 1917 .
In December, 1917 , he used the oppertunity of a Scandinacian concert-tour to escape from Russia. He never returned, starting a new career in the West as a touring piano virtuoso. In 1921 , he settled in NY City , which was to be his base for the next 20 years.
There was a period of creative silence until 1926 when he wrote the Piano Concerto no.4, followed by only a handful of works over the next 15 years, even though all are on a large scale. During this period, however, he was active as a pianist on both sides of the Atlantic (though never reterned again in Russia).
Rachmaninoff moved to Beverly Hills in California , becoming an American citizen in February 1943. He gave his last recital in the same month and died of cancer a few weeks later, shortly before his 70th birthday .
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