Switzerland

Available for 23 days

Donald Macleod explores Rachmaninov’s life in exile from Russia and attachment to the country estate he left behind: Ivanovka. Sergei Rachmaninov became 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. 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 Trpčeski, 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