When Rachmaninov died, many considered him a musical dinosaur. So why does he remain so popular with audiences? British pianist Stephen Hough chats with Clive Paget about the Russian composer-pianist’s turbulent career as he prepares to play all of Rachmaninov’s works for piano and orchestra on the 150th anniversary of his birth.
When Sergei Rachmaninov died in a California hospital, just four days shy of his 70th birthday, to many he appeared a relic of a bygone age. A decade later, in 1953, the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians predicted that his popularity was unlikely to last, dismissing his music as “monotonous in texture . . . consisting mainly of artificial and gushing tunes, accompanied...
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