Goodbye Russia by Fiona Maddocks

Author:Fiona Maddocks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2024-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Girls, Women, Cars

In London Rachmaninoff returned to Queen’s Hall for a Saturday matinee recital. His programme for the 1933–4 season featured Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata and Debussy’s ‘Golliwog’s Cakewalk’ together with Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnet 123, some Chopin and the composer’s own C sharp minor Prelude: repertory which ‘might have been selected from a schoolgirl’s satchel’, and nothing ‘likely to go over the heads of the audience, mainly women’, as Neville Cardus noted in the Manchester Guardian on 12 March 1934. His attitude to Rachmaninoff echoes Prokofiev’s: he finds much to sniff at, in this case the popular nature of the programme, yet he cannot help finding Rachmaninoff an astonishing pianist, ‘and what a fascinating personality! He puts us under a spell.’ Then follows the usual description of his chilly manner, his stiff walk, his mask-like face, but Cardus is in rhapsodies over Rachmaninoff’s use of the pedal in the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata: ‘cloud and sunshine over the valley is not more soft and changeful than Rachmaninoff’s light and shade, achieved by sensitive pedalling.’ Unfortunately Cardus disliked the Chopin, which he dismisses as Rachmaninoff being, ‘for all his versatility of style’, a Russian. In conclusion, this was a ‘perfect concert’, but nothing more than that, and certainly not what Matthew Arnold called the ‘criticism of life’.

Before his UK tour of 1934 ended, Rachmaninoff had other, speed-related matters to think about. He wrote to the Somovs, from London, on 14 March:

Only two concerts still to do, after which we have decided to ‘fly off’ to Paris, partly influenced by my two managers, Foley and Ibbs. I’m talking about an aeroplane. My Natashechka is not opposed to this, and her reason is the same as mine: if we go by train it will be late by the time we arrive, and we won’t be able to catch the grandchildren until they are too tired. By air we can leave at noon and be in Paris by 2 o’clock, with all afternoon at our disposal.27

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