Drawing extensively on Russian-language sources, a concise yet comprehensive survey of the life and work of one of classical music’s great composers.
 
Unquestionably one of the most popular composers of classical music, Sergei Rachmaninoff has not always been so admired by critics. Detractors have long perceived Rachmaninoff as part of an outdated Romantic tradition from a bygone Russian world, aloof from the modernist experimentation of more innovative contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky.
 
In this new assessment, Rebecca Mitchell resituates Rachmaninoff in the context of his time, bringing together the composer and his music within the remarkably dynamic era in which he lived and worked. Both in Russia and later in America, Rachmaninoff and his music were profoundly modern expressions of life in tune with an uncertain world. This concise yet comprehensive biography will interest general readers as well as those more familiar with this giant of Russian classical music.

Rebecca Mitchell is associate professor of history at Middlebury College in Vermont. She is the author of Nietzsche’s Orphans: Music, Metaphysics and the Twilight of the Russian Empire.