Research

Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff was born in Onega, Russia, on April 1st 1873. He was born into a high-class musical family, with his father and some of his cousins being pianists. From birth, it was expected for him to become an army officer, but after a few unsuccessful fincancial endeavors carried out by his father, they were forced to sell the family estate and move to St. Petersburg, where he began taking piano lessons at the conservatory. After his father lost the majority of their family wealth, financial struggles plagued him for the rest of his life. His cousin, who was a well-known pianist at the time, noticed Rachmaninoff's talent, and recommended he go to Moscow to study with Nikolai Zverev, a pianist who would later gargner attention on behalf of his students. He went to moscow in the fall of 1885 to study with Zverev, and after a few years of learning, he began to attend the Moscow Conservatory. In his final year at the conservatory, when he was only 19, he composed what would end up as one of his most famous pieces,  the C# minor Prelude Op. 3 No. 2. This piece, along with his Piano Concerto No. 2, is credited with cementing Rachmaninoff as one of the legends of classical piano music. Right from this piece's first premiere, on September 26, 1892, it became a hit. Going forward, it would be requested as an encore on all of his following recitals, and he would soon grow to hate it, as it would seem to him that it was all the audience cared for.

This piece has everything you could want from something so short. It establishes a few beautiful motifs right away and doesn't waste any time developing into a dramatic, energetic, and heartwrenching agitato section. Then it loops back around to the original melody, except this time it is played at fortissississimo, a dynamic marking that is almost never employed in a score. It is also stretched out so far on the piano that it had to be written in 4 staves, encompassing almost all 7 registers. With such violently beautiful outbursts of emotion, it is no wonder this piece became so popular.