Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor, born 1 April 1873 in Semyonovo, Russia, and died 28 March 1943 in Beverly Hills, California. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory, graduating in 1892, and is widely regarded as one of the finest pianists of his era and one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov gave way to a personal idiom marked by song-like melodicism, dense contrapuntal textures, and rich orchestral colour, most famously in his piano concertos and preludes. After the 1917 Russian Revolution he and his family left Russia permanently, settling eventually in the United States, where he built his reputation chiefly as a touring concert pianist while composing only a handful of further works, including the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead.

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Rachmaninoff carried the grand Romantic tradition of Russian pianism and orchestral writing into the 20th century at a time when much of the musical world was turning toward modernism, preserving an idiom of sweeping melody and virtuosic keyboard writing that remains central to the concert repertoire. As a pianist he set interpretive standards for his own works that performers still measure themselves against, and his own 1929 recording of The Isle of the Dead remains a benchmark reading of the score.

Compare recordings piece by piece — 71 works of Sergei Rachmaninoff with more than one performance on the site →

Sources:

• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sergey-Rachmaninoff