Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile

In 1940 Sergei Rachmaninoff, living in exile in America, broke his creative silence and composed a swan song to his Russian homeland.What happened in those final haunted years and how did he come to write his farewell masterpiece, the Symphonic Dances?Rachmaninoff left Petrograd in the throes of the Russian Revolution in 1917.He was 44 years old, at the peak of his powers as composer-conductor-performer, moving in elite Tsarist circles and running the family estate, his refuge and solace.He had already written the music which, today, has made him one of the most popular composers of all time: the second and third Piano Concertos and two symphonies.Reeling from the trauma of a life in upheaval, he wrote almost no music and quickly had to reinvent himself as a fêted virtuoso pianist, building up untold wealth and meeting the stars, from Walt Disney and Charlie Chaplin to his Russian contemporaries and polar opposites, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.Still, the melancholy of leaving his homeland