At age fifteen, I quit seven years of piano lessons, quit playing the piano, and heaved a sigh of relief. Maybe my mother had some regrets, but no one else. Ten years later in graduate school, I made it final and gave my music away to a friend — I was never going to play the piano again. Who would have guessed that a grand piano and harpsichord would eventually fill my living room and that I would play almost every day until my back aches! Yet

This month American Council of Piano Performers is happy to present to you a biography of Sergey Rachmaninoff.Sergey Rachmaninoff, in full Sergey Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, Rachmaninoff also spelled Rakhmaninov, or Rachmaninov   (born March 20 [April 1, New Style], 1873, Oneg, near Semyonovo, Russia—died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills,California, U.S.), composer who was the last great figure of the tradition of Russian Romanticism and a leading