Few composers have lived a life as dramatic as Sergei Rachmaninoff. Born into Russian aristocracy, he survived professional humiliation, revolution, and exile – and still managed to produce some of the most beloved music ever written. Whether you know him

George Li, born on 24 August 1995 in Boston, Massachusetts, grew up in a family of music lovers. His parents had immigrated from China, and the family frequently attended concerts in the Boston area. Classical music has been part of

Composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff had two daughters, Irina and Tatiana, born at the family estate of Ivanovka in 1903 and 1907. The Rachmaninoff children grew up between Russia, Dresden, and Switzerland before the Russian Revolution forced the family into

Few works in the piano repertoire have achieved the YouTube popularity of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. What’s striking about the concerto’s YouTube dominance isn’t just the raw view counts; it’s also which performances are generating them. Alongside historic audio of

The Russian art song has a distinguished history. The genre’s origins are attributed to Mikhail Glinka, who made it part of his campaign to create a Russian national style distinct from European musical culture. Anton Arensky (1861–1906) studied at the

The disastrous premiere of Rachmaninoff’s first symphony is one of the most infamous events in classical music history. Today, we celebrate the sweeping Russian romanticism of Sergei Rachmaninoff, but in 1897, his long-awaited First Symphony debuted to confusion, hostility, and

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) had a rather limited involvement with opera. However, he did complete three one-act operas between 1892 and 1905. Aleko was written as a graduation piece at the Moscow Conservatory in 1892, and it earned him high honours