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      “Portrait of the Composer Sergei Rachmaninov“ (1925) 

              Konstantin Somov

                     __________

Rachmaninov, late Romantic, early

Impressionist, yanked, despite his 

modern bent, Romanticism, solidly,

into the Twentieth Century, we 

heard him in movies, and 

consequently on TV, back then, on 

long-play albums, 78s at the time, 

that were flooding the market, first 

movement on the one side, the next 

two on the other, that’s how we used 

to listen

later, we’d hear Sergeant Pepper’s 

Lonely Heart’s Club Band doing the 

same, in the late ’60s, before discs

Rachmaninov doesn’t sound like 

Chopin, Beethoven, Schubert, but

you can hear their roots, their blood 

running through his compositions

but here, in his Piano Sonata no. 2,

Opus 36, he elaborates, a sure sign

of Impressionism, intellectual rather

than emotional appeal, something 

had become tiresome after half a

century of Romantic dramatization,

how many Anna Karenina‘s can you 

take

the culture was returning to objective,

rather than emotional, Charles Dickens,

Victor Hugo, and the like, bleeding-heart,

considerations, and seeking out more 

rational answers to our psychological

stresses, consequently Freud, music

had to keep up

later, I’ll tell you a story about how 

music changes the world

meanwhile, here’s Rachmaninov’s

Piano Sonata no 2

enjoy

R ! chard