Bloomsbury Sergei Rachmaninoff: Cross Rhythms of the Soul

What if everything you thought you knew about Rachmaninoff was only half the story? He was widely considered the greatest pianist of the twentieth century. His Piano Concerto No. 2 has moved millions to tears. His All-Night Vigil is one of the most transcendent works of Orthodox sacred music ever written. And yet, for decades, biographies of Rachmaninoff have told only part of his story — the part that could be understood without fully knowing Russia, the Orthodox faith, or the world of the Russian emigrant. Cross Rhythms of the Soul is different. It is the first biography of Rachmaninoff in English written by someone who lived his world from the inside. Valeria Z. Nollan — herself a Russian emigrant, highly trained amateur pianist, and scholar of Orthodox Christianity — brings to this biography what no other biographer has achieved: the cultural fluency, the spiritual understanding, and the personal parallel of a life also shaped by emigration, faith, and the Russian soul. Her meetings with Rachmaninoffs grandson in Switzerland opened doors into his private world. Her decades of research across Russia, Europe, and the United States uncovered details no previous biography had reached. Praised by scholars as a must read for any serious music lover, gracefully written and fully accessible to non-specialists, and a major work that presents a more authentic understanding of Rachmaninoff than we have had before, Cross Rhythms of the Soul is both a landmark of Rachmaninoff scholarship and a deeply human portrait of one of musics most beloved composers.