In the autumn of 1885, the twelve-year-old Rachmaninoff entered the home of
Nikolai Zverev to receive private piano instruction and at the end of May 1886, Zverev took his students to
Crimea, where Rachmaninoff continued his studies, hoping to gain entrance to
Anton Arensky's
harmony class at the
Moscow Conservatory. It was during this time that Rachmaninoff created his first composition, a two-page
Étude in F-sharp major (the manuscript is now lost). After admission to the class, he produced more exercises, the earliest of which is a
Lento in D minor; it is the only surviving piece of ten he is said to have composed. Now beginning to compose independently, Rachmaninoff's next project was a group he titled
Three Nocturnes, and is regarded as his first serious attempt at writing for the piano. The first
nocturne, in F-sharp minor, was written 14–21 November 1887, and has three parts: a beginning and an end in
andante cantabile and a central section in
allegro. The slower
andantes are gentle sections, influenced by
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, while the
allegro is unnatural and stiff and unusually fast for a nocturne. The second piece, in F major, followed on 22–25 November, also contains a slower portion coupled with a quick section. No. 3, in C minor, took more than a month to compose, dated from 3 December 1886 to 12 January 1887. With a chordal
texture spread over the entire keyboard, it is reminiscent of the music of
Robert Schumann. The nocturnes were published posthumously in
Moscow in 1949, but were not assigned an
opus number. The
Four Pieces of 1887 are perhaps Rachmaninoff's first comprehensive works. Each has a clear aim and method to attain it, and all unfold with a fluency significantly more advanced than that shown in the previous nocturnes. The opening
Romance, in F-sharp minor, harks back to
Frédéric Chopin's tenderness. The E-flat minor Prelude is an unremarkable but well-thought out piece. The third, a Mélodie in E major, is modestly expressive, but the
Gavotte in D major is, although repetitive, the most energetic and vigorous piece. These were published posthumously in Moscow in 1948, without an opus number. The suite is in four movements:
Lento: Allegro moderato in D minor,
Lento in B minor,
Menuetto in F-sharp major, and
Allegro in D major. He spent much of the next few years writing some of his orchestral pieces, including
The Rock (1893) and
Caprice bohémien (1895). His return to pianistic work in early 1896 was marked by his contribution to
Four Improvisations, a
collaboration with
Anton Arensky,
Alexander Glazunov, and
Sergei Taneyev. After the
Six moments musicaux were completed in 1896, Rachmaninoff composed a single '''
Morceau de Fantaisie in G minor
on 11 January 1899. He subtitled it "Delmo", however what this means is unknown. It is two pages long and features an emphatic, if not brief, climax. He also produced a Fughetta in F major''' in February of that year, which is also short and has clean counterpoint. He composed most of his published works in this period, starting with the
Chopin Variations. In 2003, while researching Rachmaninoff material at the
Library of Congress, the Australian pianist
Scott Davie discovered a two-page sketch of a previously unknown Rachmaninoff work, a
Piano Piece in A-flat major. While he was able to make a pencil copy, it wasn't until later he realized that the sketch was complete. Davie was given permission to make use of the piece by the composer's great-granddaughter, Natalie Wanamaker Javier, while attending the 2006 International Rachmaninoff Conference in
Amsterdam. The piece was recorded and released by ABC Classics on his
Pictures from an Exhibition CD. Since then the piece has also been recorded by
Vladimir Ashkenazy and released by
Decca. == References ==