New York

Available for 29 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 is forced to embark on a new full-time career as a concert pianist, through his first months as a refugee in Europe, and his passage west again, to New York. With his estate Ivanovka confiscated by the authorities after the October Revolution, the composer's first pieces written abroad contain echoes of home. Etudes-Tableaux Op 39 No 3 Boris Giltburg, piano Piano Concerto No 2 (Mvt 1) Daniil Trifonov, piano Philadelphia Orchestra Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor Etudes-Tableaux Op 39 No 6 Sergei Rachmaninov, piano The Bells (Mvt 2) Luba Orgonášová, soprano Berliner Philharmoniker Rundfunkchor Berlin Simon Rattle, conductor Prelude Op. 3 No. 2 Steven Osborne, piano Three Russian Songs Concertgebouw Chorus Concertgebouw Orchestra Vladimir Ashkenazy, conductor