Chichester celebration of Rachmaninoff in words and music

Olivier Award-winning actor Henry Goodman returns to Chichester with concert pianist Lucy Parham in Elégie, chronicling the fascinating life of composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff in words and music (November 12, 7.30pm).
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Lucy

Though he became an exile in 1917, Rachmaninoff’s cultural identity and longing for his homeland imbue his music, not least the many works he wrote for his own instrument, the piano.

Elégie, scripted by Lucy from letters and diaries, follows the composer from his youth in Russia, through his subsequent self-imposed exile in 1917 and finally to California, where he died in 1943.

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It’s a format Lucy has pioneered over the years – a series of performances in which she is joined by an actor on stage to deliver the words and the music of some of our greatest composers.

And she returned to the stage, in autumn last year after the first lockdowns, with her show I, Clara.

“It was the first time I had played in public since the end of February (2020). I have never gone that long before.

“I had an operation once and had to take a couple of months off, but never that long.”

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When lockdown came, Lucy lost most of her work stretching 18 months ahead.

“Until then I wouldn’t have known how much I would miss playing. It was so difficult.

“For the first week, I think I just thought it was quite nice, but then once I had watched some Netflix, I was thinking this is really no good at all. Once the initial gloss of not playing had worn off, you start to think about the long-term consequences. And once you haven’t got anything to work towards, it is hard to make yourself sit down and practise. You realise that the discipline has gone.

“I was really bad at practising for about six weeks.

“I almost got into a depression thinking that I would never play again.

“And then I gave myself a kick up the backside.

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“It is like being a dancer or an athlete. You have got to keep yourself fit.

“I had to give myself a very stern talking to! I thought it was going to be very difficult if someone suddenly asked me to play.

“Normally I would practise five hours a day.

“Even if you are just doing two hours a day, it is better than nothing, but it is still not the same. You have got to get yourself into fully fighting fit mode.”

She is delighted to be heading to Chichester now – not least because she counts the CFT among her favourite venues.

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“The show is the life of Rachmaninoff really. He lived the great majority of his adult life as an exile because he was cast out of Russia by the Bolsheviks and spent most of his time in America which he hated. But he did love a house he had on Lake Lucerne which was very similar to the one he had left in Russia.

“He came from quite an aristocratic background and you can imagine that in 1918 that wouldn’t have been very popular.

“He was hounded out. He and his family escaped and he was never to go back.

“That was the sad thing about it. He was sent a telegram on his 70th birthday by the Soviet government saying would you come back, but he was already in a coma and never saw the telegram. And really that’s a theme of the show… longing for home.”

Tickets from Chichester Festival Theatre.

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