Podcast.

Stravinsky famously described him as “a six-and-a-half-foot scowl”. After seeing him in his coffin, the conductor John Barbirolli remarked that he looked “a bloody sight more cheerful than he ever did in life”. The butt of this harsh humour was the composer Sergei Rachmaninov, whose music exudes not just the melancholy which was his own personal hallmark, but extraordinary warmth and optimism too. In this week’s edition of Composer of the Week, Donald Macleod explores the life and music of this remarkable man.

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