-Coming up on "Great Performances"...

I'm Scott Yoo.

At 44 years old, Sergei Rachmaninoff fled the Russian Revolution.

-The Bolsheviks confiscated all of Rachmaninoff's property, wealth, looted his estate, even burned it to the ground.

-He was filled with longing for his homeland.

-He carries the love of the people and the land that shines through every note of his music.

-But the problem is the kind of the Russia he left behind didn't exist anymore.

-But he embraced the modern world.

-He liked everything that was modern.

It was really interesting.

-This was modern.

-This was the height of modernity, this camera.

-He overcame serious challenges.

-He decided he's a worthless composer, that he should never compose music again.

-And he rebuilt his career in America... -That's where the sun comes out.

-...with concerts and compositions that captivated the world.

Come with me on the next "Now Hear This" to see how Rachmaninoff was reborn.

♪♪ ♪♪ Major funding for "Great Performances" is provided by... ...and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Like Rachmaninoff, pianist Yevgeny Sudbin left Russia to make his home in another country.

He has a special affinity for the composer, so I asked him and his daughter Bella to come meet me at Rachmaninoff's house, on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.

-Bella, do you play the piano, too?

-Yeah, I play the piano and clarinet.

-How good.

Do you like it?

-Yeah.

-She studies at a school that's called The Rachmaninoff School... -No.

-...in London.

-Did you recognize that you have a so famous father?

-Uh...

I mean, in our family it's normal.

Everybody plays an instrument.

And it was the same with my parents and the parents before.

It's a tradition.

It's not a job, it's a lifestyle choice.

-Just around the corner, we will find the villa of Rachmaninoff called Senar.

-I was here with Andrea Loetscher, director of the Rachmaninoff Foundation.

She wanted to show us their just-completed renovation of Rachmaninoff's Villa Senar.

-When Sergei Vasilevich was leaving Russia, he left with nothing.

He really had to restart, and work hard to get everything back he had.

Imagine, here was a big, big mountain, and he had it blown away as he was envisioning a very flat landscape with trees.

He planted the trees, imagine, with his hands.

So, he was recreating his paradise in exile.

-So, this was built in 1930?

-This was built in 1930.

-This looks like this was built in 1980.

It's incredible.

-But you know, Mr. Rachmaninoff was a true visionary.

You see the house, you see the color.

-Is this the original color?

-It is the original color.

And imagine all these big windows were in the '30s, between two World Wars.

He was a true aesthetic.

He wanted the light to come in, to really feel the area and the nature.

-Let's go inside.

-Yes, please.

And the house is not only very modern from the outside, also the inside is very modern.

You have to imagine the average person living here did not even have electricity.

-Mm.

-And we have eight bathrooms in this house.

-Why did they have so many bathrooms?

-To have family and friends.

He loved to be here with family and friends, and recharge from his tough tours.

Welcome to Rachmaninoff's living room, and his dining table.

Here you see it's very traditional.

He could have had modern Art Deco style furniture, but no.

We have, like, a warm atmosphere, a traditional Russian atmosphere, where he welcomed his friends, his family.

And look at his cutlery.

This is his original cutlery.

-Interesting.

So he wanted Russia sort of here at home.

-Sure, yes, because he wanted to feel at home here.

And that was his home, his paradise.

But let me show you one last room.

-Mm.

-This is the core.

This is the heart.

This is Rachmaninoff's piano.

-It's not a replica?

-It's not a replica.

It's his piano.

-That's amazing.

-Yevgeny, what does it feel like to be standing next to Rachmaninoff's piano?

I mean, you've played so much of his music he wrote on this piano.

-I know.

It's difficult to comprehend.

It's incredible.

I don't want to stand next to it, I want to play it.

-For sure.

Yes, please.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I wanted to know how Rachmaninoff, after leaving Russia with nothing, could rebuild his life so successfully.

So, in a Russian restaurant in New York City, I met up with my favorite concert pianist-psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Kogan, who's also a Rachmaninoff expert.

So, when did Rachmaninoff leave Russia?

-1917.

The Russian Revolution.

The Bolsheviks confiscated all of Rachmaninoff's property, wealth, looted his estate, even burned it to the ground.

-Yeah.

-He eventually settled here in New York City.

He had a wife and two daughters.

He had to support a family, and copyright laws were such that composing was not a viable way to earn a living.

He decided that he was going to reinvent himself as a concert pianist, age 44.

I mean, this is an extraordinary story because Rachmaninoff, up until this point, he mainly just played his own music.

So here he is, 44 years old, he starts learning sonatas by Beethoven, ballads by Chopin, Schumann.

And he transforms himself, not only into a great pianist, he becomes the number one box office draw in the world.

-This has never happened in human history.

This is incredible.

-Yes, it's a mind-boggling story.

-So, how did he like it here in the States?

-Well, there was one aspect of America he loved, and that is the technology.

He embraced the new technology.

He was once asked by an interviewer, "What do you like most about America?"

He said, "The best cars in the world."

-[ Laughs ] -Actually, his manager said he's every bit as much a virtuoso behind the wheel of an automobile as he is at a piano.

The only difference is that he's more particular about his cars than he is about his pianos.

-No kidding.

Want to go downstairs?

-Sure.

-All right.

-This place is called the Russian Samovar.

Now, a samovar is a metal container that's used to boil or heat water.

It's a symbol of Russian culture.

And, you know, when Rachmaninoff came here to America, he was homesick.

He tried to re-create the Russia of his past.

He effectively just ate Russian food.

He surrounded himself with Russian culture.

He almost exclusively talked to Russian friends like the other immigrant musicians, Vladimir Horowitz and Nathan Milstein.

He barely learned English while he was here in New York.

He said, "I feel like a ghost wandering in a world that has grown alien."

I think what he's referring to was that the music he wrote, by the time he came here to America, it was considered old-fashioned.

It was sort of a relic of a bygone era.

Rachmaninoff found his voice at a very young age and he stayed true to his voice.

There's a type of lush romanticism.

-Wow!

Beautiful.

It's interesting because here's a man who sort of has a foot in two eras.

-Yeah, I think that's fair.

I think he did embrace technology and welcomed it, but I think essentially his musical soul was forged in a romantic era.

And he remained that way as a musician really, throughout his professional life.

-Okay.

-Ooh!

-Mmm!

-[ Speaks in native language ] I'm gonna dig in.

This looks really good.

Mmm!

That's good.

-It's sable.

It's really good.

-Next I went to New Jersey, to the home of Glenn Thomas, a collector of automated music machines, with Anna Polonsky, a Russian-American pianist.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ So, this is a player pipe organ with percussion?

-That's it, Yes.

-I mean, it's flabbergasting.

There are actual instruments in there!

-Yes.

This is the equivalent to five or six instruments.

All in one.

-It's incredible.

I've never seen anything like this.

-And you won't, because there's not many around.

-I mean, you think about in the early 1900s, barely any electricity, really no radio yet, I mean, a little bit.

If you want to hear live music and you don't want to go to the concert hall, you have to have one of these in your house.

-Yes, you have to have one of those.

-I mean, how many instruments like this still work?

-As far as I know, approximately 10-15.

-10 to 15?

-Worldwide.

-How did you get into collecting these things?

-Oh gosh, don't let me -- That's a long story.

When I was 10 years old, my neighbor had a backyard player piano and that was what I was interested in.

-You caught the bug.

-That's right, I did.

-You got some other ones here?

-Yes, yes.

I have this one here.

In about 1965 or so, I got really interested in these.

This was at a park about 10, 15 minutes from me, which I just fell in love with.

-This is your childhood?

-Yeah.

It was my childhood.

-This machine was part of a carousel.

Kids are riding on the carousel, the music is going, and you fell in love with the carousel?

-That's it.

-Fell in love with the music.

That's it.

What actually happened is I worked at that carousel for about 3 or 4 years, then I spent the next 40 years trying to figure out how I could get my hands on it.

-And now it's consumed your entire house!

Well... [ Laughs ] Yes, one could say that.

One could say that.

-Do you have any others?

-Well, I might just have another one coming.

Would you like me to show it to you?

-Yes.

-Come on, let's go see it.

This is an Ampico recording, Prelude in C Sharp Minor by Rachmaninoff, played by the composer.

-Played by the composer.

That's amazing.

Rachmaninoff's own performance is encoded on that piece of paper?

-Yes.

Yes.

It's -- Yeah.

-That's crazy.

-It's done very, very well.

-So, how does one record onto a piece of paper?

How does that work?

-They record it on a monitoring roll which then translates it to paper.

So, it's almost that way.

-What did Rachmaninoff think of his own recording of this?

-Rachmaninoff was totally enamored by hearing himself on the roll.

He was able to set many different tempos and hear him play any way he wanted to play.

-He loved the technology, right?

-Yes, and he stayed with them for a number of years.

-Fantastic.

Can we hear it?

-Yes, you can.

The tempo is shown on the roll at 90, and we turn it on just like so.

And now we hear it.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -This was long before high-fidelity recordings.

It must have been as amazing for Rachmaninoff to hear his actual performance as it was for us.

-You know, he was sort of panned by the critics for kind of rigid interpretations, but it's certainly not coming across at all in this performance.

-I remember hearing his performance of his third piano concerto when I was much younger and thinking, this is so effortless and so fast, and it's quicksilver.

It just goes.

He doesn't ever dwell on anything.

He just kind of goes.

And I hear some of that in the performance on your piano.

I mean, there's this elegance and he just kind of lets the music flow.

-He changes tempos liberally.

-It's very singing.

-It's very singing.

-Beautiful.

-He was noted for playing as if he was narrating a story.

♪♪ ♪♪ -It's not surprising he embraced this technology and used it to grow a new American audience.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -We're here at Columbia Medical School.

This is the Vagelos Education Center.

I'm almost certain that it opened in 2016 because my daughter, she was a first-year student at Columbia Med School.

And I remember the building opened right then.

-So... why are we here?

-A concert grand piano that once belonged to Rachmaninoff is housed here at Columbia Medical School.

-No kidding.

Why?

-According to legend, Rachmaninoff was a patient at the hospital formerly known as Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

Rachmaninoff was an obsessive, conscientious practicer.

He couldn't stand when more than a day would elapse without practicing.

He was extremely generous, Rachmaninoff.

And so I could see how he would express gratitude to the medical center that took such good care of him by donating a piano to them.

-Sure.

-Yeah.

-Should we go in?

-Okay.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Rachmaninoff wrote a set of 14 songs and dedicated them to soprano Antonina Nezhdanova.

Antonina read through the songs.

She got to the 14th song, the final song, which is called "Vocalise."

Vocalise means vocalization.

And she said to Rachmaninoff, "Where are the words to this song?"

Rachmaninoff said to her, "The music in this song expresses an entire universe of emotions.

Words have absolutely nothing to add to the intensity of the emotions that I'm trying to express."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -By now, I had a dual image of Rachmaninoff.

Sentimental expat longing for home.

Cool modernist, embracing technology.

But a visit with Ukrainian-born photographer Sonia Goydenko was about to combine those pictures.

What do you got there, Sonia?

-I have the Leica III.

It's one of the first portable cameras that came out in 1933.

-Really?

-Yeah.

This is the exact camera most likely that Rachmaninoff used when he was taking pictures of his family.

-No kidding.

-Mm-hmm.

It got its influence from the cinema camera, which was used like this, and they made it into this kind of camera.

As you guys know, he liked everything that was modern.

It was really interesting.

-This was modern.

-This was the height of modernity, this camera.

Rachmaninoff, among many other photographers, was able to take this on family trips, do portraits of himself, portraits of his kids, portraits of his grandkids.

We have a bunch of these photos here.

This is him chilling in the hammock.

-In a suit.

-In a suit, with a tie.

-Suit and tie.

-Yeah, like photos like this.

-He looks happy.

-Yeah.

So, he often -- You'd know this, in Russia you never smile for photos, ever.

You're just like, all the photos... -This is by accident.

-This is by accident.

This is candid.

That's how you know it's candid.

You always have this really intense scowl.

He was called a six-foot scowl.

-Yeah.

-People used to say that.

-His resting face was pretty scowly in general.

-Pretty scowly.

-Just by nature.

-This is a great one.

-Yeah.

-This is right here on the piano.

He had these giant hands.

You guys probably know this, but I think that they said that he could reach up to 12 notes with his hand.

-A twelfth, yeah.

-Twelfth, right.

-Oh, look at that.

He's happy.

-Because this camera is so small and so portable, you could actually photograph candid moments like this, where he's just with his family.

He's hanging out, they're having fun, they're laughing together.

Photography before was really different.

If you wanted a photo with you and your family, you had to go to a special portrait photographer, pay a lot of money, have these giant studio lights, you know, over you that would take half a day.

This is just, you know, him in his garden.

This was really big for street photographers, too, and photojournalists.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, who's like the father of street photography, he used this camera, exactly this camera.

Same with Helen Levitt, who's a native New Yorker.

She had this camera.

Because you can just literally put this in your pocket.

-It's so compact.

-It's so tiny.

It's so tiny.

It's wild.

-There's only one portrait of Bach that's considered -- one that's considered real, that we know this is actually Bach.

There are hundreds of photos.

-And from different ages.

Look how young he is here.

He has the dog.

-Always with a dog.

-This is him playing piano for his grandchildren.

You see, he's always smiling when he's with his family.

Yes.

It's really lovely.

I feel like it's the way that you act when no one's really looking, or you don't know that anybody's really watching.

-Beautiful.

-Again, like, with something like this, this wouldn't be accessible, this memory, if these kinds of portable cameras didn't exist.

You would never see inside this really beautiful private life of this person.

-Mm-hmm.

-Yeah.

-So, Bella, you know we looked a bit at the footage of Rachmaninoff, remember?

-Yeah.

-What did you feel he was like?

-Well, like, by himself, he looks scary.

But I've seen pictures with him and his family, he looks much happier and kind.

-Yeah, because the movie we watched, he was departing Europe, and he kind of looked like Count Dracula.

But he really changed and brightened up when he was with his family.

-Yeah.

-He was actually quite funny as well.

He liked going to movies.

He liked to watch comedies.

He liked Charlie Chaplin.

Back in Russia, he had a dog.

And he also liked horses.

In summer, he went swimming, and ice skating in winter, which all Russians like.

He had two daughters.

-Do you know what he was like with his daughters?

-Um...

I think he loved them very much.

This place actually was one of his happiest places, apart from when he was in Russia.

He spent many summers here with his family.

Everybody was singing and playing around, making music at home.

That was just a beautiful part of the whole culture and the whole tradition.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Camera shutter clicking ] ♪♪ [ Camera shutter clicking ] ♪♪ -To me, that excerpt of the second concerto, that to me is the man in the photo with the grandchild, and that feeling of warmth.

This is the real Rachmaninoff.

-Mm-hmm.

Hard to write music more intimate than this, huh?

-Yeah.

-So tender.

-So generous also.

So nice.

-His music is so personal and goes to such depths of love and nostalgia.

Americans have their amber waves of grain.

Russia is famous for its expanses.

So, I feel that he takes the wand from Tchaikovsky in that sense in evoking the Russian landscape.

Whereas Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff's hero, mentor, musical ancestor had drawn from the Russian folklore right and left, and that was the essence of his music, Rachmaninoff's melodies, unless specifically meant to be Russian songs, they were original, and he had a special Rachmaninoff color to them.

For example.

♪♪ And this is not really that inventive, yet you go and you harmonize it like so.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Camera shutter clicks ] -So do you consider him to be a nationalist Russian composer?

-I think he would consider himself to be a nationalist.

He carries the love of, maybe not political Russia, but the people and the land in his heart.

That shines through every note of his music.

-That's very nice.

-Let's go outside, do some street photography?

-Sure.

-Let's do it.

♪♪ ♪♪ -I'm thinking, Rachmaninoff didn't exist in a vacuum.

He's part of a line of great Russian composers -- Tchaikovsky and Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov.

I mean, it's kind of endless.

What was that?

Was that the training or was it just... -I mean, I remember from my childhood, every household had a piano in the house.

Everybody was making music.

Music was a big part of culture against all odds really, because there were a lot of sanctions against many Russian artists.

So after Rachmaninoff left Russia, after the revolution and the Soviet Union was established, a lot of music was banned.

Many poets and just anything that wasn't kind of realist art was being banned.

Yet the artists kept creating and kept making more, coming out with better ideas, with even bigger personalities.

So I think maybe that says something about the Russian spirit.

♪♪ ♪♪ -We're talking about Rachmaninoff being an expat.

You are also an expat.

-We were, I guess, escaping the same thing, but maybe in different ways.

-Yeah.

-I left much earlier, of course.

I was only 10 years old.

Rachmaninoff was 44, the age I am now.

But the problem is, the Russia he left behind didn't exist anymore.

♪♪ ♪♪ -You know, Russia's going through a pretty dark period right now.

It's isolated, and there's a lot of difficulty.

What does that mean for the future of Russian art?

-I think the great thing about the Russian spirit is, when it's faced with adversity, people tend to smile and just get on with things.

Create and just make art, make music.

This is how I explain it myself, why art, despite the fact that it was always trying to be suppressed by the regime, the more they suppressed it, the more art was being created.

-Smile in the face of adversity.

-Yeah.

It's difficult to say what the future holds, but through this adversity, maybe you will have even greater artists.

I don't know how to explain it.

-Maybe there's another Shostakovich right around the corner.

-I do sincerely hope so.

♪♪ ♪♪ -All right, follow me, but keep talking to each other.

Turn to me.

-Thank you.

-Yeah, eat.

-Mmm!

-Perfect.

-We have to sustain our photographer.

-That's true.

Aww, you guys are so cute.

♪♪ Oh, so I just remembered, you know how Rachmaninoff was a refugee from Russia because of the Russian Revolution?

You basically have the same thing happening now in Russia because of their government.

It's difficult for people who are artists, cultural figures in Russia to even live there.

There's millions of people that have left in the last few years.

-This is not a new story.

-Yeah.

-Rachmaninoff left with, so to speak, just the clothes on his back.

But he had his mind, his hands, his gift.

Of course, now the cultural elite that's leaving, they're bringing with themselves those gifts, however, they have left their culture.

-Yeah.

-It's a painful reality for the motherland.

-Yeah, absolutely.

Do you think that it affected Rachmaninoff a lot, like, made him depressed, like, having to leave and kind of almost not start from scratch, but really start a new life?

-I don't think, I know.

There's documentation about the fact that he was, in fact, quite depressed.

It wasn't just the logistics of his immigration, it's...

He left himself behind.

-Yeah.

-Do you see who this piece is dedicated to?

-N. Dahl.

Who's that?

-N. Dahl is Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who was Rachmaninoff's psychiatrist.

You know, Rachmaninoff always had a gloomy disposition.

He was always sensitive to criticism, and an artistic setback had plunged him into a severe depression.

He decided he's a worthless composer, that he should never compose music again.

He consults physician Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who had set up a practice that was devoted to the therapeutic use of hypnosis in treating psychiatric patients.

-Does that actually work?

-Every session that he had with Dr. Dahl, and they met daily, Dr. Dahl would put him into a hypnotic trance.

He would say to him, "You will begin to write your concerto.

You will work with great facility.

Your concerto will be of excellent quality."

They started these sessions in January.

They continued meeting in January, February, and March.

By April, all of the symptoms -- Rachmaninoff's mood had improved.

He was sleeping well, his appetite was restored, but he actually started composing... -This?

-This.

-So it worked?

-I would say that it did work.

-That's incredible.

-Yes.

It's pretty safe to say that without Dr. Nikolai Dahl, Rachmaninoff may have gone down as a barely remembered footnote in music history, as opposed to the immortal that we regard him as.

But Dr. Dahl, in addition to his medical practice, was a pretty serious amateur violist.

I think even without the dedication, his spirit hovers over this piece.

I want to show you something here.

-You're talking about the famous viola solo?

-Yeah, there it is.

It's really interesting because there's this gorgeous theme in the third movement of the piece.

It's a heart-stoppingly beautiful theme.

It's been turned into hit songs, the song "Full Moon and Empty Arms," Frank Sinatra recorded it.

But this theme, when it's introduced, the theme is given to the violas.

And violists, I think, are rarely spotlighted in situations like this.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the viola was Dr. Dahl's instrument.

-Let's play this section.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Once he'd come to America and begun his non-stop concert tours, Rachmaninoff struggled to find the time to compose.

♪♪ But through his concertizing, by the 1930s, he'd earned enough to build his lakeside estate, to remind him of his family home.

There, he was inspired to write his last orchestral work.

Have you heard this one before?

-Yeah.

-This is really one of his more famous themes.

Actually, Rachmaninoff borrowed, or actually stole, the theme from Paganini.

This is a violin piece.

It goes like this.

This is the theme.

♪♪ ♪♪ And that's where it ends usually, but Rachmaninoff repeats it.

♪♪ ♪♪ -And it's funny, it just sounds like almost like he's making fun of the violinist by having these little ornaments... ...almost like he's hitting the wrong notes.

-[ Chuckles ] Probably, even if you're trying not to hit the wrong notes, it's probably pretty easy to hit wrong notes in this piece, right?

It's just pretty difficult for piano.

-We're not supposed to talk about wrong notes.

-[ Laughs ] -No, but Rachmaninoff was one of the greatest living pianists.

So the first set of, I don't know, 10 variations or so, they are very traditional.

I mean, you have one variation after the other.

And after that, he kind of takes off, because there are so many elements in this piece, that he's just so clever how he transforms.

It's almost like something is awakening, to kind of take it to the next level.

For example, variation 13 is where Rachmaninoff actually changes the theme.

In the piano, you can hear the sound of the bells, while in the violin you hear the main theme.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -What about variation 17?

-Yeah, it's a very dark variation, but there is a reason why it is dark.

I'll play a bit of that.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Yeah, and the end of it, it kind of goes on for quite a few pages... -Yeah.

-...like a slithering snake, but then an amazing transformation happens at the end of it.

That's where the sun comes out.

-Mm.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -In New York again, I went to see speaker designer John DeVore, of DeVore Fidelity, known for his vast record collection.

I wanted to hear some of the recordings Rachmaninoff made across his long American career.

-These are the records that I have of Rachmaninoff playing Rachmaninoff.

-Jeez.

By the way, just a quick question.

How tall are you, John?

-I'm over 6'5.

-Over 6'5, so you're like Rachmaninoff's height?

-I guess I am, yes.

[ Both laugh ] -These are heavy.

-They're not vinyl.

78s were made of shellac, so this is a pre-plastic.

-A resin.

-It's a resin, exactly.

From, I believe, from trees.

-And 78, meaning... it's spinning fast.

-Yes, 78 RPM exactly, yeah.

So it's very short.

We don't get a lot of music per side; about three minutes.

-Perfect for Rachmaninoff's short pieces.

-Yes.

The short pieces fit beautifully on these.

He was a pioneer.

He was probably the biggest superstar of the early electric recording era.

This is when they first started using microphones to record.

-So before then, they were just vibrating some kind of a horn.

-Exactly right.

Before that, like Caruso or somebody, he would have to sing at the top of his lungs into a giant horn, and it was an acoustic recording.

Then, in the electric era, you would sing, or you would perform into a microphone, and then the microphone would have amplifiers, and then that would be what would drive the needle carving the disk.

-Which one should we listen to?

-Let's take a look and see.

Is this Rachmaninoff and Kreisler?

-It is, yeah.

-Greatest violinist of all time with-- -Absolutely.

-Certainly, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, pianists of all time.

-Yes.

-We got to hear this.

-Let's do it.

-Okay.

♪♪ ♪♪ So I've actually played this violin.

-You played Kreisler's violin?

-Kreisler's del Gesu, yeah.

Of course, it sounds a lot better when he plays it, but... -Amazing.

-...certainly, the recording captures that chocolatey, rich sound of that instrument.

But what's amazing to me is the kind of quick reflex that Rachmaninoff has playing this.

He always has to answer the violin.

And he does it so quickly, and elegantly, and effortlessly.

-Very elegant.

Absolutely elegant.

Yes, I agree.

-Fantastic.

♪♪ -Hmm.

Beautiful.

-It's cool.

Okay, I got to hear "Rach 3" on your speakers, on your cartridge, on your turntable.

-Absolutely.

-I'm a little nervous to handle this.

-Oh, here, I'll take it.

-So I'm going to let you do it.

-Yep.

The definitive.

♪♪ ♪♪ -I've heard this recording before, and it's all coming back.

This kind of effortlessness of Rachmaninoff.

First of all, it's so fast.

-The tempo is incredibly fast.

-It's so fast.

But it's no problem.

You don't sense that he's under any duress to do this tempo.

He's just slicing through it like a hot knife.

It's just easy for him.

-The dynamics of it.

He can play so quietly and still come through, and not be drowned out by the orchestra.

♪♪ ♪♪ -He's not milking anything; everything is understated.

The whole thing is...

It's not "Look, Ma, look at how fast I can play."

Because it doesn't even occur to him that he's playing fast.

They don't make them like that anymore.

It's just incredible.

-And also, to add the whole next layer, that he wrote it.

-I don't know how you can get, arguably, if not the greatest, one of the greatest pianists ever.

-Mm-hmm.

-Arguably, if not the greatest, one of the greatest conductors ever.

-True, yes.

-And then one of the all-around great composers.

But that's one person.

-And we were lucky enough that he lived at a time when it was documented, and we can actually play it back and listen to it.

-Incredible.

♪♪ For our last stop, Anna and I went to a historic New York recording studio to meet engineer Steven Sacco and Bulgarian-American cellist Zlatomir Fung.

Steven, if we wanted to make an old-time sounding recording that sounded like something that Rachmaninoff would have done, how would we go about doing that?

-Well, first of all, we're going to use probably just one microphone.

Because when Rachmaninoff recorded, say, his second piano concerto, a full orchestra with the piano, just one microphone 30 feet above them, captured the whole thing.

-[ Gasps ] -One microphone for every flute, every oboe, every clarinet, every violin, every cello, and the solo piano, with one microphone.

-That's a big part of the sound and why it sounds the way it does.

In modern times, we're using a lot of microphones, and we're balancing on a mixing console.

We'll turn microphones up or down to make the balance.

In those days, they're physically placing the instruments closer or further away from the microphone to get the right balance between the orchestra.

-This is not a replica, right?

This is the original.

-This is a real, original RCA 77.

-And you still use it?

-We still use it.

It's something that I'll reach for on almost every recording session.

Nowadays, it's mixed in.

But in this instance, it's definitely going to bring us right back to that time.

So, if the musicians want to get into position, we'll place the microphone and get started.

Maybe start right about there.

-So that's surprisingly closer to the cello than I might expect.

-Yeah, so we're going to favor the cello in this instance because we don't want the piano to overpower it in the recording, because we won't be able to change it after the fact.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Rachmaninoff's music and love of modern technology were united, finally, in the studio, where he inspired a new generation of listeners and recording artists.

♪♪ ♪♪ You know, it's amazing how much that one microphone colors the sound.

It does have that kind of old-fashioned antique sound.

-Mm.

Yeah, it takes you back.

-It's the microphone, right, that's coloring it?

I mean, everything else is modern here.

-In some ways, it's taking away.

It's restricting the frequency range that we normally hear.

You're hearing slightly less detail.

More room sound, it's further away.

But that's giving an impression of a different age.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Zlatomir has such an old-time sound, and you have the microphone in really right in his face, and it's just...

I love this.

It's great.

-Yeah, it's really capturing him well.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -You know what I'd really love?

How about keeping the piano and the cello in exactly the same position... -Mm-hmm.

-...but swapping out the mono for a modern array of microphones, sort of AB them?

-Yeah, let's do that.

-Let's check it out.

[ Song stops ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Well, this is what I'm used to hearing, of course.

-Yeah, it's a lot different.

-Yeah.

And it is better.

I mean, you know, you just have much more definition.

-There's a lot more detail, yeah.

-That's cool.

♪♪ ♪♪ It struck me that, had he not left Russia, Rachmaninoff could never have reinvented himself -- as a concert pianist, American modernist, recording pioneer, and the biggest classical star of the early 20th century.

A reminder to other expats, and all of us, that while change can be painful, it can also mark the beginning of an even richer life.

I bet you Rachmaninoff would have loved to hear your microphone setup today.

-Yeah, how cutting edge would it be today?

-Oh, he would have loved it.

I'm Scott Yoo, and I hope you can now hear this.

♪♪ ♪♪ -This program is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.

♪♪ To find out more, visit pbs.org/greatperformances.

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