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Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor whose lush, chromatically rich Romanticism arrived just as European music was turning toward modernism, earning him a reputation as - in his own phrase - one of "the last of the Romantics." A legendary virtuoso at the keyboard, he wrote sweeping, technically punishing piano concertos and preludes that remain core repertoire. He left Russia after the 1917 Revolution and spent his final decades composing and touring across Europe and the United States.
the sound in question
1901
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18Sergei Rachmaninoff
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky1870s–80s · Romantic / Classical / Ballet
Rachmaninoff idolized Tchaikovsky as a student in Moscow - his grandmother had introduced him to Tchaikovsky's music, and Tchaikovsky himself championed the teenage Rachmaninoff's early work - and Rachmaninoff carried his mentor's dark, song-like melodicism and richly upholstered orchestration into the 20th century.
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1893
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 "Pathétique"Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1907
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27: III. AdagioSergei Rachmaninoff
listen forThe Adagio of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 unspools the same aching, long-breathed string melody and lush orchestral surge that defines the finale of Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique."
Frédéric Chopin1830s–40s · Romantic / Classical
Rachmaninoff modeled his own set of 24 Preludes, cycling through every major and minor key, directly on Chopin's Op. 28 cycle, inheriting Chopin's intimate, harmonically restless miniature form and pushing it into darker, more percussive territory.
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1839
Prelude in C minor, Op. 28 No. 20Frédéric Chopin
1892
Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2Sergei Rachmaninoff
listen forRachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor mirrors the terse, obsessive left-hand tolling and creeping chromatic tension of a Chopin prelude, just scaled up from salon-piece to cathedral-bell.
Franz Liszt1840s–50s · Romantic / Classical
Rachmaninoff inherited Liszt's transcendental, orchestra-scale piano virtuosity and his knack for spinning a borrowed theme into a glittering showpiece built to let a soloist show off.
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1847
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2Franz Liszt
1934
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43: Variation 18Sergei Rachmaninoff
listen forRachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini takes the same crowd-pleasing theme-and-variations showpiece structure Liszt used in his Hungarian Rhapsodies, right down to a virtuoso cadenza built around the soloist.