Sergei Rachmaninoff (rock-MAHN-in-off) was Russian, born in the Romantic Period but lived well into the Modern Period. We might expect him to compose in the modern mode, but he was a Romantic at heart. His music is lush and richly warm; his melodies soar, and his piano music is rhapsodic. Tchaikovsky knew him and had a great influence on his music. He was not the usual child prodigy. He did not become really serious about music until he entered the Moscow Conservatory at age fifteen. In addition to piano he studied composition. He won the Great Gold Medal for composition which had been awarded only twice in the history of the conservatory. When he was only eighteen and still in school, he composed his First Piano Concerto.

Rachmaninoff, with his wife and two daughters, left Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, never to return to his country. He was a virtuoso pianist and traveled the world giving concerts. He specialized in the music of Chopin in addition to his own. He moved to the United States in 1935. A few weeks before he died he became a citizen of the U.S.

He composed mostly for the piano. His concertos are very difficult to play. Musicians call him "Rocky" and they call his Second Piano Concerto "Rocky Two." You will learn a beautiful theme from the third movement of this concerto. His Third Piano Concerto is called - that's right - "Rocky Three." It is incredibly difficult. It is the concerto that tormented David Helfgott, (twentieth century classical pianist) to the point of a nervous breakdown (as portrayed in the 1996 movie Shine).

Rachmaninoff recorded many of his own works so we can listen to the master himself.