The work’s title, meaning “fantasy pieces,” alludes to their being, in essence, character pieces, and not to any freedom of form. Composed in 1892, the year of his graduation from the Moscow Conservatory, Rachmaninoff dedicated the set of pieces to his harmony professor, Anton Arensky. 3 are one of the earliest indications of the composer’s burgeoning mature and individual style. He died of cancer in Beverly Hills in 1943.The five pieces of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Morceaux de fantaisie, op. His final work, Symphonic Dances (1940), looks back at Russia with both nostalgia and bitterness, including a vengeful quotation from his choral All-Night Vigil (1915). The relative failure of his Fourth Concerto (1926) led to another creative hiatus, eventually broken with the Variations on a Theme of Corelli for solo piano (1931), followed by 1934’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra with its seductive Andante cantabile variation. His pre-Revolutionary masterpieces include his Second and Third Piano Concertos (1901, 1909), and the soulful and consoling Second Symphony (1907).
As a composer, Rachmaninoff suffered blows that reduced his creativity: the poorly performed 1897 premiere of his First Symphony, which resulted in a three-year creative block the October Revolution of 1917, which forced him to leave his homeland and lead a more-or-less itinerant existence between the U.S. Shortly afterwards, he wrote the Prelude in C-Sharp Minor (1892), which became his regular encore as a touring pianist. Rachmaninoff took his exams a year early and graduated aged 19 with the highest possible marks.
After a shaky start, his musical studies improved once his talent was recognized at the Moscow Conservatory by Tchaikovsky protégé Arensky.
Their sound informs several of his works, not least the tolling opening of his Piano Concerto No.
Born in 1873, his earliest formative experience was hearing the bells of St. Rachmaninoff excelled as a conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer famous for his ripely melodious, wistful strain of late Romanticism.