Word: rachmaninoffs
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...citizens who stay away from concerts, the best-known high-brow composer now living is probably Russian-born Sergei Vassilievich Rachmaninoff. His crashing Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, first introduced to the U. S. in 1898 by his friend Pianist Alexander Siloti, immediately started to outsell Tin Pan Alley's song hits, has rolled up a total of some 5,000,000 copies. In 1909, when 36-year-old Rachmaninoff made his U. S. debut as a concert pianist, the "Flatbush* Prelude," as it was then known, had made his exotic name familiar to U. S. lips...
...Rachmaninoff lived to regret the popularity of his Prelude. He himself gave it more than 1,000 performances in the U. S. alone, got so sick of it that the mere sound of its three opening crashes gave him the creeps. Once, when asked in an interview how it should be played, he wrung his hands and replied hoarsely: "I do not care! They can play it any way they choose just so long as they do not play it where I can hear...
Last week Conductor Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra put on an all-Rachmaninoff program, with 65-year-old Rachmaninoff himself as soloist. Besides his First Piano Concerto and Third Symphony were played three of his Preludes, newly tricked out in orchestral dress by Orchestrator Lucien Cailliet...
...Preludes was the famed "Flatbush." After listening to Cailliet's orchestration, the gloomy Rachmaninoff unbent, expressed himself as "happy" with the results. After the concert he unbent still further, told Philadelphia reporters he disliked swing but greatly admired the jazz of 15 years ago. "Ah," said Pianist Rachmaninoff, "if I could only hear that fine pianist, Eddy Duchin, playing Irving Berlin's Blue Skies, I'd be very happy...
...London Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Queen's Hall), London's three crack choirs (BBC's Choral Society, the Royal Choral Society, the Philharmonic Choir), 16 of England's best concert and opera singers, Sir Henry's great & good friend, Sergei Rachmaninoff. Ralph Vaughan Williams composed a special song for the occasion called Serenade to Music. Sixty-nine-year-old Sir Henry planned to turn over the proceeds from his anniversary party to an endowment of hospital beds for orchestral players...