‘In the darkest days of the pandemic, as I was sitting at home, it occurred to me that 2023 would be a significant year – the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninov’s birth. Would I live to see another anniversary of such importance? Perhaps if I lived to 90! So, I thought to myself, “If we ever get though this, I’m going to celebrate properly.”’
Steven Fox, music director of New York’s Clarion Choir, is speaking to me in a restaurant just a stone’s throw away from 505 West End Avenue, the stately New York apartment where Rachmaninov and his wife Natalia eventually settled after fleeing the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Fox is telling me about his very special project for 2023 – to conduct all of Rachmaninov’s major choral works. ‘I had no worries that orchestras would celebrate the symphonies and that pianists would perform the concertos, but so little attention is given to his choral works in general,’ he continues, ‘and they were his favourite works. The two works he was most proud of at the end of his life and – he even requested that part of the be sung at his funeral.’
