ABSTRACT
Born into the lesser Russian nobility at a time
when the family fortunes were waning,
Rachmaninov had an insecure home life,
though his musical ability was recognized and
encouraged from an early age. A continua-
tion of these reduced circumstances caused
the family to split up and move to a much
humbler home in St Petersburg. This emo-
tional turmoil, together with the loss of his
younger sister, did much to fashion the
composer’s lifelong feelings of emotional
insecurity and fear of death shielded by a
rather subdued temperament. In 1882 he
attended the local conservatoire where he
received piano lessons together with a general
education. Lack of self-motivation promoted
a move to the Moscow Conservatoire, where
tuition under the pedagogue and dis-
ciplinarian Nikolai Zverev caused him to
show immediate improvement by way of a
concentrated work programme involving a
study of the classics and the virtuoso piano
tradition of Liszt and contemporaries. Living
in at the Zverev household, he was to meet
the foremost musicians of his day including
the pianist Anton Rubinstein, the composers
Arensky and Taniev who were soon to become
his teachers and above all Tchaikovsky,
whom he idolized.