Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile

Observer classical music critic Maddocks (Hildegard of Bingen) details in this captivating biography the fascinating and traumatic life of Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873—1943). After escaping his home country in 1917 during the Russian Revolution, Rachmaninoff was “a ghost wandering in a world made alien.” A famed composer, performer, and wealthy landowner in Russia, he reinvented himself as a virtuoso pianist in America through punishing cross-country tours that left little time for composing. Three years before his death, he composed “his last spark”­—the Symphonic Dances, an orchestral suite suffused with a “lyricism and melody” that reflects a haunted longing for his homeland, according to Maddocks. Categorizing the book as “a broadly chronological set of impressions and excursions,” Maddocks details Rachmaninoff’s interactions with Sergei Prokofiev, Eugene Ormandy, Vladimir Nabokov, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Igor Stravinsky, and others, providing an up-close portrait of an influential musician and the shifting cultural climate in which his legacy was shaped. Classical music lovers will be engrossed. (Jan.)