Water music C
RACHMANINOV
The famous composer kept his own motor boat on Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne. By Kevin Desmond
ountless music lovers around the world consider Rachmaninov’s legendary 2nd Piano Concerto (best known as the theme from the film Brief Encounter) as one of their all-time favourites. But few know that one of Sergei Rachmaninov’s main hobbies was motorboating. By the late 1920s, the famous expatriate Russian composer and concert pianist was exhausted. In his fifties, he told his friends that he had had to reduce his composing to a minimum simply because he had been spending most of his time railroading to and fro across the USA and Europe, giving a gruelling series of concerts to support himself and his family. He was one of music’s most sought- after and highly paid concert stars. And he was homesick. Often he felt as if he had left his inspiration back in his native Russia. If only he could find somewhere to recharge his energies during the precious summer months.
Early in 1929, an old friend, Oskar von Reisemann, invited the composer and his wife to join him at his home beside Lake Lucerne in the Swiss canton of Hertenstein.
Above right: The composer and concert pianist in a more familiar pose
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The Rachmaninovs were so taken by the beauty of the place that they decided to make it their home. Rachmaninov bought a sizeable plot of lakeside land near the little village of Weggis, on the northern shore of the lake and known as the ‘Riviera’ of central Switzerland. Magnificent paddle steamers and comfortable saloon motor vessels of the Lake Lucerne Shipping Company regularly pulled in at the jetty on their voyages. Helped by his wife Natalia, Sergei conceived a villa to remind him of his family’s estate, Ivanovka in southern Russia, where he had lived before the Soviet Revolution. They worked with a reputable firm of local architects on a building fully influenced by the style created at the avant-garde Bauhaus Institution in Germany.
CLASSIC BOAT MARCH 2012
By the Spring of 1931, returning from further international concert tours and recording sessions, the Rachmaninovs found their villa nearing completion. They decided to call it Senar, combining their first names, with a final R from their family name. During the 1930s, Rachmaninov was to consider his Swiss summers as some of the happiest, relaxed and most productive of his life. Here he wrote two of his major compositions, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 1934 and Symphony No 3 in A Minor, completed in 1936.
As a relaxation from hours, days and months spent composing and revising these works, Rachmaninov decided to buy an open motor boat. He was already known for his love of fast cars, buying himself a new automobile every year. Some 20 years earlier, living in Beverly Hills, California, he had incurred several fines for exceeding the speed limit. He acquired a 9m (29ft 6in) motor boat second-hand. Like the house, he named it Senar, and had a boathouse built for it. He wrote to a friend, “The boat only cost me SFr1,600, plus SFr100 to the neighbour who
took me to the auction.”
On 25 June 1933 he described the boat: “It has a 4-cylinder motor. In spite of old age (I refer to the motor not to myself), it works splendidly. I’ve not had a single misunderstanding with it... but I should like greater speed. Yet the wooden body of the boat – of redwood – is beautiful and will serve another hundred years. So if I also last that long, I shan’t have to change the boat.” Soon after this, Rachmaninov replaced the 4-cylinder engine with a more powerful unit. This provided the increase in speed and enabled him to go out and have fun, regularly chasing the pleasure steamers across Lake Lucerne. He soon became an expert driver, his large pianist’s hands deftly guiding the steering wheel.
RACHMANINOFF FOUNDATION
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