Music: Preludes

To U. S. citizens who stay away from concerts, the best-known high-brow composer now living is probably Russian-born Sergei Vassilievich Rachmaninoff. His crashing Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, first introduced to the U. S. in 1898 by his friend Pianist Alexander Siloti, immediately started to outsell Tin Pan Alley's song hits, has rolled up a total of some 5,000,000 copies. In 1909, when 36-year-old Rachmaninoff made his U. S. debut as a concert pianist, the "Flatbush* Prelude," as it was then known, had made his exotic name familiar to U. S. lips.

Rachmaninoff lived to regret...

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