The Private Rachmaninoff

There is a common notion about Sergei Rachmaninoff: He was a dour, unsmiling man with off-putting ways and gaunt face. His hair was cropped convict short. He stood ram-rod straight at all times, even when receiving applause on stage. The granite face with the stern sorrows of the ages carved into it never cracked, never lightened. He was forever the stern Sergei, the rock-hard Rachmaninoff, composer of Isle of the Dead, an artist never more than a nod away from quoting the Dies Irae. And in his person, so too his music, or so it is often believed.

Well, I knew a man who knew Rachmaninoff. His name was Abram Chasins. In the 1970s when I was first at KUSC, Chasins in his most senior years came to USC as Musician-in-Residence, a position created specifically for him, and while at the university he helped transform KUSC from a student-run station with an eclectic format to, as the City of Los Angeles called it when honoring Chasins, “a strong cultural force and a nationally prominent broadcasting entity.” Chasins had served from 1943 to 1965 as Music Director of WQXR in New York, and helped establish the benchmark standards against which all classical stations have measured themselves ever since. Back in those halcyon days of classical music broadcasting great figures such as Sergei Rachmaninoff would visit the studios of WQXR. Chasins came to know Rachmaninoff well. He said Rachmaninoff, in private away from the public eye, often lavished warmth, concern and consideration on others – family and old friends. Chasins said Rachmaninoff was a man who enjoyed talking about movie stars, popular music, and radio personalities. He loved listening to the radio. He was a great fan of Jack Benny, and would “guffaw gleefully” at jokes on the radio.

Writing for RCA, Chasins described Rachmaninoff thusly: “As a human being Rachmaninoff was a greatly misunderstood man. It was bound to happen and the world cannot be blamed for not knowing what it is not permitted to know. Rachmaninoff's forbidding manner created the impression of a creature not of our time or kind, but rather one from some historical era of past glories which he alone seemed to remember. He was far from unconscious of the muck of the world. He simply chose to remain aloof from it.

“Even some new friends came to know him as he really was. For several years I had corresponded with him, spoken perhaps a dozen times to him over the phone and had visited him in his New York apartment. Although I had occasion to discover that his gloomy countenance and misanthropic behavior were protective devices, our relations remained professional rather than social until I met him again at a Christmas gathering at Steinway's in 1937. The press had just published an announcement of my forthcoming appearance with the New York Philharmonic under Barbirolli as soloist in my second piano concerto. 'Who practices with you your concerto?' asked Rachmaninoff. When I answered that the orchestra parts had not yet been reduced to a second piano version and I was therefore practicing alone, he said quickly, 'But that is impossible. Send me the score. I will look it over and practice with you.'

“Sure enough, two weeks later he came to my studio, sat down at the second piano and worked with me for some four hours. I really came to know him that day. His meticulous workmanship was again demonstrated in the perfection with which he knew and played the orchestra part. He exacted the utmost precision from himself and from me. Over and over and over again we practiced some thorny passage, crawling along at a painfully slow pace. He was unsparingly generous with suggestions both compositional and pianistic, all with supreme tact and a gentle humor.”

When the Moscow circus came to New York, Rachmaninoff was said by Chasins to have gone and been “trilled as a child… tears of happiness streaming from his eyes while those gigantic hands wiped them from his face.”

He loved cars, and drove very fast, and with “the same precisional coordination and rhythmic rightness of his piano mastery.” He loved fast boats as well, and was often spotted skimming across the lakes of Switzerland.

I have heard elsewhere that it was not uncommon for Rachmaninoff, carefree, to roar at stories, some he told himself, and in his sixties, to roll on the floor with his grandchildren.

Still, the image of Rachmaninoff the perfectionist stoic remained. Chasins recalled another example. “He worked incessantly. I never knew an artist who worked with such infinite patience. Once, I had an appointment to spend a day with him in Hollywood. Arriving at the appointed hour of noon, I heard an occasional piano sound as I approached the cottage. I stood outside the door, unable to believe my ears. Rachmaninoff was practicing Chopin's Etude in Thirds, but at such a snail's pace that it took a while to recognize it because so much time elapsed between each finger stroke. Fascinated, I clocked this remarkable exhibition; twenty seconds per bar was his pace for almost an hour while I waited riveted to the spot, quite unable to ring the bell. Perhaps this way of developing and maintaining an unerring mechanism accounted for his bitter sarcasm toward colleagues who practices their programs ‘once over, lightly’ between concerts.”

Bitter sarcasm? Could this be yet another understanding of Rachmaninoff the artist which is also a misunderstanding of Rachmaninoff the man? There is an oft-told story which may reveal something of the private, witty Rachmaninoff. Once, he and Fritz Kreisler were performing a joint recital. Kreisler was one of those musicians who often practiced “once over, lightly” and rarely practiced long and hard. In the middle of a work he lost his place in the score. The violinist leaned close to Rachmaninoff, who was at the piano, and whispered, “Where are we?” Rachmaninoff, without looking up, replied, “In Carnegie Hall.”