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Rachmaninoff, Sergei Vasilievich
(1873-1943)
composer and pianist
The heir of
TCHAIKOVSKY
as the main exponent
of Russia's classical tradition, Rachmaninoff was
a piano virtuoso who is also considered Russia's
last great romantic composer. Born to a military
family in the Novgorod region, Rachmaninoff
was trained in music by his mother from the age
of four. He studied at the St. Petersburg Conser-
vatory (1882-85) and then at the Moscow Con-
servatory, graduating in 1892 with a gold medal.
After graduation he began his concert career,
while working first as a teacher at the Mariinskii
School, then as music inspector at the Ekaterin-
skii and Elizavetinskii Institutes. In 1897-98, he
spent a year as conductor of Savva Mamontov's
Moscow Private Orchestra. By this time he had
already written his First Piano Concerto (1892)
and a one-act opera,
Aleko,
and a stellar future
lay ahead of him. The criticism of his First Sym-
phony (1897) caused him to withdraw from
writing, but with the help of hypnosis he com-
posed his Second Piano Concerto (1901), an
instant and enduring success. He achieved addi-
tional successes as a composer with his Second
Symphony (1908), Third Piano Concerto (1909),
and the choral works
The Bells
(1913) and
Vespers
(1915). The other areas of his career also flour-
ished. An appointment as conductor with the
Bolshoi Theater in Moscow (1904-6) was fol-
lowed by a period in which he alternated
between winters in Dresden and summers in
Russia (1906-9). Rachmaninoff made his first
visit to the United States in 1909, and after a
guest appearance in Sweden in 1917, he decided
to emigrate in response to the
OCTOBER REVOLU
-
TION
of that year. He first lived in Paris and Swit-
zerland before moving to the United States in
1935. Somewhat out of place in a modernistic
age, Rachmaninoff managed to compose impor-
tant pieces in the last decade of his life, including
Rhapsody on a theme of
Paganini
(1934), his
Third Symphony (1936), and Symphonic Dances
(1940). On stage until the last few weeks of his
life, at the time of his death Rachmaninoff was
considered by many to be the greatest pianist in
the world.
Radishchev, Aleksandr Nikolaevich
(1749-1802)
writer
Radishchev is generally regarded as the founder
of the revolutionary tradition in Russia. He was
born to a prosperous landowning family whose
serfs would later repay their generally humane
treatment by hiding them in the forest for pro-
tection at the time of the
PUGACHEV REBELLION
(1773-74). Radishchev was educated at the
Corps des Pages in St. Petersburg, graduating
with distinction and earning a trip with other
students to study law at the University of Leip-
zig, Germany. Radischchev later wrote of his stu-
dent days in
The Life of Fedor Ushakov
(1789),
dedicated to his good friend Ushakov, who had
died an untimely death. Back in St. Petersburg
in 1773, he entered government service but quit
in 1775 in protest against the excessively cruel
treatment given to Pugachev's defeated follow-
ers. With Count Aleksandr Vorontsov's assis-
tance, he returned to government service in
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