Rachmaninoff Performance Diary
The Performance Diary is a database of all known performances and recordings by Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, and is the result of over a decade of research. It gives an unparalleled insight into the intensity of Rachmaninoff’s performing career, and its geographical reach.
In 2006, I gave the research to the Rachmaninoff Society, so that the material would have a permanent and recognisable home, and be free to browse for anyone interested in Rachmaninoff’s extraordinary career.
In time, it is hoped that a wish of Rachmaninoff’s sister-in-law, Sophia Satina, will be realised, with the Diary becoming a truly complete record. For this reason, both I and the Rachmaninoff Society are calling on anyone who may hold programs from Rachmaninoff’s long and busy career, or newspaper reviews of his concerts, to send copies for inclusion on the website.
‘Unknown Piano Work Found’ – a short article published in Sydney University’s UniNews, 2006
Scott Davie, a pianist and lecturer in Russian music history at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, has found an unpublished sketch by Rachmaninoff in the composer’s archives in Washington’s Library of Congress.
Researching for his PhD on the composer’s melodies, Davie said he was amazed to uncover the two page sketch in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s hand, hidden in a pile of blank manuscript pages where it had languished for possibly 60 years.
Davie was permitted to make a copy, which he brought back to Sydney.
As the sketch was on Russian manuscript paper unlikely to have been available in the West, Davie concluded it was probably one of the few possessions Rachmaninoff thought important enough to take into exile with him at the time of the 1917 revolution. The piece is a template of Rachmaninoff’s style in his last 4 years in Russia, which didn’t really continue after that period.
Davie said:
“Eclectic, short-form, pictorial, experimental, harmonically unpredictable, modern – in fact, this was possibly the most modern phase of his composing life.
Davie is presenting the world premiere of the Rachmaninoff find on ‘Pictures from an Exhibition,’ an ABC Classics CD.