Dr. Faustus Rachmaninoff
‘THEY said the strings of his fiddle were made from his wife’s intestines; the wood, from his father’s coffin; this Paganini. The very devil was in his playing; he was the very devil himself.
The church denied him sacred soil for the repose of his soul. Maybe his spirit is still restless and his black art still seeks for expression. How otherwise can it be that three composers, Schumann, Brahms and Rachmaninoff were each led to a paltry tune, a mere Paganini study, to glamorise it on the piano. In his "Variations on a Theme of Paganini," Rachmaninoff is another Dr. Faustus seeking a lost youth. In’some of the variations the devil comes through with the glitter of a grim virtuosity; but, mostly Rachmaninoff’s suave nostalgia wins over the fiend and Paganini’s soul finds a dubious rest in music of evangelical piety. A hundred years or more ago a satirist wrote: "Who are those who pay five guineas To hear this tune of Paganini’s? Echo answers-‘Pack-o-ninnies,’ "
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 330, 19 October 1945, Page 8
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169Dr. Faustus Rachmaninoff New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 330, 19 October 1945, Page 8
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