More than two hundred photographs and documents are on display in what is to become a permanent exposition.
The great composer, conductor and performing pianist was steadily donating a third of his vast earnings to charity, testify materials from his private archive, which the Library of the US Congress is preserving. Sergei Rachmaninoff was generously helping Russian emigrants, purchased many tons of food to relieve Russian cultural activists in the early Soviet years, as they were on the brink of starvation, and sent to the Soviet Union railroad carloads of medicines and surgical and X-ray equipment during World War II. His wife and daughter were knitting warm things for frontline soldiers.
It was hard to overestimate such great and disinterested aid-yet Rachmaninoff's testament remains unfulfilled to this day. Soon after he died, the newspaper of emigrants Novoye Russkoye Slovo had a special commemoration issue, with contributions by his and his family's friends. They all said it was the composer's cherished dream to be buried in Novgorod. His body was put in a lead coffin to be taken across the Atlantic. Yet it was 1943, with World War II at its peak. For that, or possibly, some other reason, Rachmaninoff's last desire did not come true. He was buried in America several months after death.
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was born on his parental estate in the vicinity of Novgorod. He left Russia soon after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 eventually to settle in the United States.
