SpringfieldNewsSun.com

"A very tall, grave gentleman ... of irreproachable correctness and sobriety steps without smiling upon the stage. He seats himself at the piano and plays. He does not smile once through the whole occasion. In no way does he gesticulate or parade. All that he communicates he says with two wrists and 10 fingers, without the raising of an eyebrow."

Neither the reviewer from the News nor or The Sun gave a physical description of Sergei Rachmaninoff as he took the stage Oct. 23, 1935, at Springfield's Memorial Hall.

But a week later, after the pianist appeared at New York's Carnegie Hall to perform many of the same selections, New York Times reporter Olin Downes rendered the portrait above.

Famously warm when among friends, the performer was the picture of on-stage austerity.

"So it has always been with Rachmaninoff," Downes wrote, "and so it will be for the years to come."

Stephen Siek, adjunct professor of piano, music history and American music at Wittenberg University, said that Rachmaninoff, 62 when he performed in Springfield, may have had additional underlying physical reasons for his stringent demeanor that season.

Although "he's a bit of a hypochondriac," Siek said, "he had a lot of physical problems, and it wasn't easy for him to go out on stage and do these things."

But do them he could.

And thanks to the Fornightly Music Club (See Article on

Page B2), he did them in Springfield.

Back from Europe

Siek said a check of Rachmaninoff's letters indicates his Springfield stop was one among the first after a return from Europe.

His performance here likely was part of a tune up of his repertoire for an American tour to come.

Chopin's Sonata in B Minor was part of the Memorial Hall program. And witnessing it would have been, for Siek, a pleasure.

"He did not record that. I wish he had," Siek said.

A Rachmaninoff recording of another Chopin Sonata — the second in B Flat — is considered a classic.

Rachmaninoff's connection with Chopin went back to the Russian's student days in tsarist times, when pianist Anton Rubenstein, who luxuriated in Chopin, shared his love of the Polish composer.

With Chopin, Rachmaninoff "does things that are not on the page," Siek said. "He was criticized for that, but it's epic, it's overpowering."

And would have been unforgettable, which apparently can't be said of the whole performance.

Both the unnamed reviewer from the Sun and the Times' Downes ultimately paid tribute to Rachmaninoff's genius.

But both also cite imperfections as Rachmaninoff got rolling, although careful to do so politely in deference to the master.

"Yesterday, in the early part a of his program, he might not have been at his best," Downes wrote of the Carnegie Hall recital.

The Sun reviewer said Rachmaninoff was "perhaps not quite precise in the intonation of his low bass notes" in Beethoven's "Thirty-two Variations, C Minor" ... and in the third of three dainty sonatas by Scarlatti which followed."

But by the time the Chopin sonata was over, the reviewer from the Sun had been won over.

"He swept from the opening allegro maestoto movement through the scherzo and largo into a truly impressive finale with a remarkable deftness of execution."

Finding the sweet spot

A hallmark of Rachmaninoff's play was a distinct approach to interpretation, said Christopher Durrenberger, associate professor of music at Wittenberg and a concert pianist.

In each piece, Rachmaninoff identified "a sweet spot," a place at which the music was at its most expressive, Durrenberger said. He'd then "build the architecture of the piece around it," shaping the interpretation before and after with that climactic moment in mind.

"The other thing," said Durrenberger, "is his sense of long (melodic) line," something that appears in Rachmaninoff's interpretations and compositions.

"You've got a phrase that goes a page long," the equivalent of a very lengthy and complex sentence, Durrenberger said.

And Rachmaninoff somehow sustains the line's sense of wholeness and integrity for the entire period.

Free Bird

How he sustained interest in his own C Sharp Major prelude over the years isn't so clear.

"He hated to play it," Siek said.

Rachmaninoff wrote his signature piece at age 19, creating an immediate success that would follow him the rest of his life.

As the years went on, the constant demand that he play the prellude reminded him of the unpleasant fact that he never copyrighted it and would never get more than the roughly $20 he originally been paid to compose it.

His copyright oversight ultimately meant that he also had to suffer silently through ragtime-style recordings of his own work that he was powerless to stop.

But the piece was his "Free Bird" — an albatross over his head that his audiences had to have.

Siek said a group of women known as the Flatbush Flappers would attend Rachmaninoff's New York performances and never be satisfied until the prelude was played.

In Springfield, it was the last of Rachmaninoff's three encores and delighted both the crowd and the reviewer from the Daily News.

"Indeed, no Rachmaninoff program would be complete without this number," the reviewer wrote, "and the moment he struck the first chords of it, the audience could not refrain from bursting into applause."

Transported in time

The Daily News reporter

said a breach in concert etiquette almost occurred at one other point in the performance.

"When he played his own composition of 'Etude Tableau,' a real gem of musical artistry, it was with difficulty that the applause was restrained until the conclusion."

All the time, audience members watched a initially austere looking man being transformed by his music.

"As Rachmaninoff plays he seems utterly to forget everything but his art," the Daily News wrote.

"Silhouetted in bold relief against the floodlighted backdrop of the Memorial Hall stage," the Sun wrote, "the man and his piano held the audience enthralled in the spell of their music."

With the help of a piano, that very grave gentleman of irreproachable correctness filled the hall with life.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.above