Word: rachmaninoff
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...Sergei Rachmaninoff had already arrived as a composer. But the night his first symphony had its premiere he was full of fright. Recalling it years later, he wrote: "I stepped out to the fire escape to hide. There I remained throughout the performance. . . . Soon I found myself on the Nevsky Prospekt, where I wandered aimlessly...
Next day, the critics were merciless. Composer Cesar Cui called the symphony's discords "devilish"; Rimsky-Korsakov told Rachmaninoff, "Forgive me, I do not find this music at all agreeable...
...Rachmaninoff put the score aside, and for three years couldn't write a note. In despair he went to Dr. A. Dahl, who day after day, while Rachmaninoff slept in an armchair, repeated hypnotically, "You will begin to write." The cure finally took...
...four-hand piano version of Rachmaninoff's long-forgotten first symphony was found in Moscow two years ago; Soviet scholars, looking farther, uncovered orchestral parts in Leningrad. (The Russians, who once scorned Rachmaninoff as "the servant and tool of the worst enemies of the proletariat" because he left Russia after the revolution, now honor him as one of Mother Russia...
...insincerely, see ecstatic visions at the drop of a Rameau and consider Liszt slightly indecent, it is considered not quite proper to approve of Vladimir Horowitz. They sneer at this programs and at his private life, and scrupulously avoid his concerts. The days of Von Bulow, Busoni, and Rachmaninoff are gone, and Horowitz, the virtuosa of the new technique, is something of an anachronism...