Plashch Rakhmaninova - Russo Dzhordzh

J. Rousseau calls the genre of his book "a mixed double genre of memories and biography." George, an eight-year-old boy pianist from a poor Jewish family accidentally breaks the expensive cello of his friend Richard Amster. Richard's mother Evelyn, who herself was a pianist, easily forgives him. Many years later, after becoming a cultural historian and professor at the University of California and then at Oxford, George Russo writes "The Cloak of Rachmaninoff" - an unusual memoir in which tells two parallel stories of life. Parallel in the sense that their main characters are captive to a deep nostalgia for the lost. The first story - about the fate of Evelyn Amster, an unknown American pianist, who lost her son and obsessed with the great Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. The second - about Sergei Rachmaninoff, who failed to overcome the longing for the rest of his life for the lost homeland.Events that make up the life of Sergei Rachmaninoff, have long been detailed by biographers. But can they convey the mysterious inner world of creative nature? How to explain the influence of Rachmaninoff's music on listeners with the help of dry facts alone? Rachmaninoff's Cloak is a narrative based on both erudition and the author's intuition; it focuses on nostalgia and the melancholy it caused, which is in J. Rousseau became the key to understanding the musical language of the Russian composer. The touching story of Evelyn Amster, fascinated by the life and work of Sergei Rachmaninoff, intertwined with her story of the author himself make up this story about twins, ghosts, parallel lines of life and happy discoveries. It is as difficult to forget as Rachmaninoff's melodies.Philip Ross Bullock, professor of Russian literature and musicatOrtuniversity