Family balks at Talk by Russia of moving Rachmaninoff's remains

NYT ^ | 9/6/2015 | James Barron

[Borges]

VALHALLA, N.Y. — It was quiet beneath the mountain laurel shrubs shielding the grave of the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff from the late-summer sun. The furor is 4,500 miles away, in Russia, its indelible voice in every melodic line he wrote — a different Russia, a different sensibility, a different life, different time.

Resolutely nationalistic Russians want his body back. His great-great-granddaughter, Susan Sophia Rachmaninoff Volkonskaya Wanamaker, says “nyet.” Or she might, if she spoke Russian, but probably not. In a conversation about where his remains belong, she repeatedly used words like “dignity” and “respect.”

[Publius]

In 1938, Arthur Rubinstein discovered that Rachmaninov and Stravinsky were among his neighbors in Beverly Hills. Hearing that they had never met, he invited them both to diner at his house.

Following that invitation, he began to fear what would happen. Rachmaninov was the ultimate Russian Romantic, and Stravinsky was the bad boy of music. Suppose they didn't get along.

When they met for dinner at Rubinstein's house, they were distant at first. Then Stravinsky asked shyly, "Sergei Vassiliovich, have you had problems collecting your royalties from the Bolsheviks? I've had the very devil of a time."

Then Stravinsky was treated to that rarely heard basso profoundo belly laugh of Rachmaninov.

"Igor Feodorovich, those communist sons of bitches have been robbing me blind for the past twenty years!"

And the two men became the best of friends.

[left that other site]

I would have LOVED to have been there.

They would have had a good belly-laugh at my attempts to speak Russian.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Bump.....

[Intolerant in NJ]

Also "Story of Three Loves" (Eighteenth Variation)....

[wtd]

Interesting interpretation...thanks. I never would have imagined the harmonica playing such a classical romantic piece. Guess I lived a sheltered life!

[elcid1970]

Larry Adler, the “harmonica virtuoso”, played some wonderful arrangements of classical pieces in the 1940’s.

Too bad he was an unrepentant commie.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Yes, it's sort of an unusual rendition, but back at about the time the movie was released (mid fifties I think) there were a number of brief "semi-classical" recordings released featuring the harmonica - "Ruby", "China Nights", a collection of Offenbach tunes called "Somersault", and some others - added a kind of haunting, melancholy beauty to the music that seems to fit Rachmaninoff.

You might be interested in this old TV program which featured Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto, but which opens with an entertaining discussion of his music and life by Andre Previn - his take on how Rachmaninoff avoided the influence of contemporaries like Stravinsky and Bartok is worthwhile (the program actually starts at about ten minutes into the clip with some excess footage at the beginning for some reason) - Rachmaninoff program