Speed excited Rachmaninov. The composer and pianist’s solemn presence on the concert platform hid a personality that rejoiced in the roar of the combustion engine. Beneath that famously austere exterior lurked a love for shiny new saloons, elegant sedans and fast aeroplanes. And when in 1934 he moved his family into their new villa on the north shore of Lake Lucerne he added an additional thrill – a sleek new speedboat.
Like so many other musicians, Rachmaninov was drawn toof Lucerne and its majestic lake. He honeymooned here in 1902 with his new wife Natalia, and 30 years later, during his restless lifetime exile from his beloved Russia, Lucerne seemed the ideal place to put down roots. He bought a lakeside estate on the Hertenstein promontory, pulled down the old house and built a fine modernist replacement. Today, marking the 150th anniversary of its illustrious owner’s birth, the Bauhaus-style Villa Senar is open to the public for the first time (its name combines the first two letters of Sergei and Natalia, with the ‘r’ for Rachmaninov as a final flourish).
