大象传媒

Donald Macleod explores Rachmaninov鈥檚 life in exile from Russia and attachment to the country estate he left behind: Ivanovka.

150 years ago this week, Sergei Rachmaninov was born: one of the finest pianists of his generation, touring the world in the 1920s and 30s as a musical megastar. Composing had been his real passion since childhood, and towards the end of his time in Russia before the Revolution, it was farming. Though St Petersburg and then Moscow was his base for much of his early life, it was Ivanovka 鈥� a country estate deep in the Russian countryside - that formed him. The house and the land surrounding it were a major source of his creative inspiration until his last visit in 1917. Donald Macleod explores how important Ivanovka was to Rachmaninov, and how he carried the precious memory of it with him when he left it behind for a life of exile

Rachmaninov builds a new home in Switzerland, a villa called Senar situated on the shores of Lake Lucerne, which attempts to recreate aspects of the Russian home he'd had to leave behind. This is the most settled period of his exile but it's only five years until he moves on again, in 1939, to escape another war in Europe.

Mendelssohn/ transcr. Rachmaninov: A Midsummer Night's Dream - Scherzo
Simon Trp膷eski, piano

Symphony No 3 (Mvt 2)
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Vasily Petrenko, conductor

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Excerpt)
Martin James Bartlett, piano
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Joshua Weilerstein, conductor

Isle of the Dead
Sinfonia of London
John Wilson, conductor