September 2010
Beginner
376 pages
12h 7m
English
The story of this gorgeous piece of music is almost as moving as the work itself. In 1897, a few years before he composed the Piano Concerto No. 2, Rachmaninov was devastated when the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 ended in catastrophe. A drunken conductor butchered the piece, critics mocked it mercilessly, and the emotionally battered composer suffered a nervous breakdown that prevented him from composing for the next three years. Eventually, with the help of a psychotherapist named Nikolai Dahl, Rachmaninov regained the confidence to compose, and he ...
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