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Donald Macleod explores Rachmaninov’s 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 – 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.

In today’s programme, Donald Macleod tells the story of Rachmaninov’s first visit to Ivanovka, the country estate of his cousins, as a teenager. He initially found the landscape around it boring and oppressive, but he soon came to love this sleepy place, wrote his first Piano Concerto there, and when he got married was gifted a house on the estate.

Lilacs op 21 no 5: Siren
Sergei Rachmaninov, piano

Piano Concerto No. 1 (mvt 1)
Leif Ove Andsnes, piano
Berliner Philharmoniker
Antonio Pappano, conductor

Dances from Aleko
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Vasily Petrenko, conductor

Cello Sonata in G minor (mvt 1)
Bruno Philippe, cello
Jerome Ducros, piano

Vesna
Chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre
´óÏó´«Ã½ Philharmonic
Gianandrea Noseda, conductor