Falling in love, I believe, is one of the miracles of human existence—a true blessing gifted to some on the adventurous journey called life. Stored in our memories are marvelous sensations and thrills of special moments—remembering an unforgettable meal once savored, a treasured conversation with dear friends, a tune that stays in our ears forever with joyful associations, a beautiful place that recalls happier times—or looking across a crowded room to lock eyes with the person destined to become the love of your life. Recollections become embedded with our personal history, but it is impossible to return to that exact place in time ever again. To have known love, no matter what its shape or form, even briefly, is to have experienced one of the miracles and divine blessings of life. However, just as night follows day, love will eventually be followed by loss. That is part of the cycle of life.
Spending many hours living with the piano music of Rachmaninoff, means entering his world of sadness and pain. Intimately acquainted with loss from an early age, Rachmaninoff witnessed the deaths of two sisters. Perhaps this accounts for his generous use of the “Dies Irae” theme throughout his compositions. Poverty was certainly not foreign to his existence. Due to the unpredictable behavior of his father, Rachmaninoff witnessed the dwindling of the aristocratic family fortune, sometimes being left as a young student with not enough money to buy his next meal. (Ironically, later in life, Rachmaninoff would become an extremely wealthy man and the highest-paid professional pianist in all the world!) Within Rachmaninoff’s deeply dark Russian soul, the pains of suffering and depression managed to coexist with ecstatic highs, always leaving the listener of his music some glimmer of hope for a better future.
This is a man who loved his homeland, and the sounds of the Russian landscape are heard throughout his music. Listen to the tolling of the Orthodox Church cathedral bells and the longing and yearning in those never-ending phrases that keep climbing towards their emotional climax. The real tragedy of Rachmaninoff was having to leave Russia and fleeing with his family during the 1918 Revolution. He loved “Ivanovka,” the beautiful rural estate where he composed his Preludes and his Etudes-Tableaux but was forced to leave everything behind to forge a new life. Rachmaninoff eventually settled in the States and made his living primarily as a concert performer. It is interesting that most of his compositions for solo piano were written while still living in Russia. That’s where his soul always remained, surrounded by melancholy and an unquenchable yearning for what was lost, never to be regained. To fully comprehend the man, his music, and the tragedy of his life, perhaps it is necessary to have loved deeply and to have experienced, as he did, the pain of losing something so very precious.
Rachmaninoff wrote about feelings and matters of the heart—his music probes the universals of the human condition and brings these emotions to the surface. Yet in the beginning of the twentieth century, critics often condemned what they called the “banal sentimentality” of his music. During that time, complexity was worshipped at the expense of muting what the heart was feeling. Rachmaninoff made feeble attempts to please current tastes, but his soul was unable to comply. Both the man and his music were out of favor—certainly not given the respect shown to him today. The same criticism was also leveled at the music of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff’s mentor.
I remember the first time I fell in love with Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. I was 10 years old, in a music store in Philadelphia buying sheet music my piano teacher had assigned me to learn for the following week. The concerto was being played on the loudspeakers throughout the shop. Immediately I ran up to the clerk to ask her what I was hearing and then requested a copy of the music. Unfortunately, I was only sold the easy version of the main theme—not the original score. Even at that young age, I was determined to one day learn Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto. Years later, I was ecstatic when I received Van Cliburn’s Moscow performance of that glorious composition as a birthday gift. I listened to that recording so many times that I nearly wore it out. What an inspiration as well as an affirmation of what I wanted my life’s work to be. I had fallen in love with music and the piano! 
Certainly, for me, music has been the gift that keeps on giving! The deeper I venture to explore and the bolder I become, the more I can receive. To share the love of music, to connect the composer to the listener and to manage to pry open the heart into feeling the deepest of emotions, that is the true function of the performer.
Indeed, music is truly an offering of love—to be shared and cherished forever.
