UDC 78.071.1
DOI: 10.36871/hon.202302170

Authors

Inna M. Romashchuk,
State Music and Pedagogical Institute named after M. M. Ippolitov-Ivanov, Moscow, 109147, Russian Federation

Abstract

The article reveals the history of friendship between Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff and his classmate in the class of N. S. Zverev, Matvey Leontievich Presman (1870–1941), pianist, teacher, prominent musical and public figure. In their youth, they studied together and lived in the musical boarding school of Nikolai Sergeyevich Zverev (16–1). Presman's memory has preserved to the smallest details the impressions of his youth and much of what directly concerns Rachmaninoff's professional maturation, his formation as a personality, composer and pianist. He described this period in his detailed memoirs called "A Corner of Musical Moscow of the Eighties". Presman completed his Memoirs on October XNUMX, XNUMX, at the time of the "autumn" of his life, two years before his seventieth birthday. Having crossed this milestone, he passed away. His name emerges in a half-erased form from the depths of history and remains little known to the general public. Information about him is fragmentary. Materials and documents related to his creative biography are scattered throughout different cities where he happened to work: Rostov-on-Don, Tbilisi, Saratov, Baku, Moscow. However, in a number of archival sources, in publications concerning Rachmaninoff, we find evidence that the trusting, friendly relations between childhood friends persisted even after each went his own way. Presman participated in the performance of Rachmaninoff's music, organized concerts of his compositions, initiated the production of the opera "Aleko" in Rostov, having received the score (parts) directly from Rachmaninoff. The latter, in his turn, took an ardent part in the fate of Presman, especially during a difficult period of his life. Their destinies miraculously converged at the beginning of the second decade of the XXth century.

Keywords

Presman and Rachmaninoff, evidence of their friendship and mutual support, correspondence