Bullock Philip Ross (ed.) Rachmaninoff and His World

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press ltd., 2022. — 384 p. — ISBN 978-0226823744
One of the most popular classical composers of all time, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) has often been dismissed by critics as a conservative, nostalgic holdover of the nineteenth century and a composer fundamentally hostile to musical modernism. The original essays collected here show how he was more responsive to aspects of contemporary musical life than is often thought, and how his deeply felt sense of Russianness coexisted with an appreciation of American and European culture. In particular, the essays document his involvement with intellectual and artistic circles in prerevolutionary Moscow and how the form of modernity they promoted shaped his early output. This volume represents one of the first serious explorations of Rachmaninoff’s successful career as a composer, pianist, and conductor, first in late Imperial Russia, and then after emigration in both the United States and interwar Europe. Shedding light on some unfamiliar works, especially his three operas and his many songs, the book also includes a substantial number of new documents illustrating Rachmaninoff’s celebrity status in America.Сборник статей, посвященных избранным страницам жизни и творчества С.В. РахманиноваMOSCOW AND MODERNITY
- Reading the Popular Pessimist: Thought, Feeling, and Dance in Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Narrative (Peter Franklin);
- Sergei Rachmaninoff and Moscow Musical Life (Rebecca Mitchell);
- Love Triumphant: Rachmaninoff’s Eros, the Silver Age, and the Middlebrow (Marina Frolova-Walker);
- Rachmaninoff and the “Vocalise”: Word and Music in the Russian Silver Age (Philip Ross Bullock);
THREE OPERAS
- Tchaikovsky’s Echoes, Chaliapin’s Sobs: Aleko, Rachmaninoff, and the Contemporary (Emily Frey);
- Rachmaninoff’s Miserly Knight (On Money, Honor, and the Means to Create) (Caryl Emerson);
- Burning for You: Rachmaninoff’s Francesca da Rimini (Simon Morrison);
NEW WORLDS
- Rachmaninoff and the Celebrity Interview: A Selection of Documents from the American Press (Selected and Edited by Philip Ross Bullock);
- The Eighteenth Variation (Steve Swayne);
- “One of the Outstanding Musical Events of All Time”: The Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1939 Rachmaninoff Cycle (Christopher H. Gibbs);
- “The Case of Rachmaninoff”: The Music of a White Emigré in the USSR (Marina Raku, translated by Jonathan Walker);
- Aesthetic Ambition and Popular Taste: The Divergent Paths of Paderewski, Busoni, and Rachmaninoff (Leon Botstein).