Arthur Hirst - A Dear Friend

Since substantial research into Rachmaninoff's life and work got underway only decades after his death, we should count ourselves especially fortunate that his sister-in-law Sophie Satin built a considerable collection of memoirs written by family, friends and acquaintances. Unfortunately we often know but little about the personalities and life stories of these first hand witnesses - therefore it is not easy to assess the bias of their statements. Who were they, what was their attitude to life, what was their relationship to Rachmaninoff?

During our work at SENAR we found numerous traces that give colour and personal meaning to his remarkably diverse entourage.

Among the portrait pictures in the collection is one made by no lesser a photographer than the renowned London-based Claude Harris. The man in the picture wears a lorgnette - status symbol for a man of culture. The date is not fully legible - possibly 1924 - but the signature is clear: Arthur Hirst. Given the early year, we may assume that this was one of the framed photographs that Rachmaninoff singled out for display at his music studio at SENAR.

Arthur Hirst is one of the many friends from Rachmaninoff’s inner circle who seem all but forgotten today. His memoirs ‘Rachmaninoff the Man’ can be found at the Library of Congress in box 51/19. However, finding even a date of birth and death is no easy task. The name Arthur Hirst is common and even after filtering based on address details and country of birth, for example, we were unable to find a clear match. In old newspapers and magazines on the internet however, one find reports about Arthur Hirst’s musical activities. For example, on June 4, 1921 in The Swiss Observer (UK) wrote about a recital with Lucerne based Swiss singer Felia Dorio in Oxford’s Mortimer Hall:

‘Mr. Arthur Hirst's fine playing needs no other comment but praise. He is a master of his art and plays with great brilliancy, beauty of expression and delicacy of touch, and he held his audience with his fine execution of the selections fro'm Beethoven and Chopin.’

The Musical Times of January 1928 provides more details about the format of Arthur Hirst's performances:

'Modern Music' was a big enough title to allow Mr. Arthur Hirst, at Hove, to cover much ground. As part of his educational purpose, he showed how Grieg built up his form from the fiddlers of his native land, who played without reference to a text- book. These people used all sorts of strange harmonies and strange colours as their fancy led them. Grieg discovered that it was possible to use all of them in all kinds of chromatic harmonies. He collected an enormous number of these native airs and harmonized them. That gave him the idea for original work of his own and his work has affected practically every musician since.’

Arthur Hirst's enthusiasm for the music of Edvard Grieg is also evident in a book written by his piano teacher Mathilde Verne - a pupil of Clara Schumann. A first edition copy of this book, published in 1936 and signed by Arthur Hirst, was found on SENAR. Hirst himself had made a substantial contribution to the book, which is indicated in the copy in the outer margins of pages 131 to 136 with red pencil. In it he tells the reader about his friendship with Sergei Rachmaninoff.

It was not for nothing that Hirst had been elevated from fan to friend. He clearly had a keen eye for the inner workings of the family. Striking in his account in Mathilde Verne’s book is the attention paid to Rachmaninoff’s wife. He saw them as a team and in his inscription he refers to both of them by their initials – which, not coincidentally, also form the name of Rachmaninoff's country residence on Switzerland's Lake Lucerne.

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The composer clearly appreciated such attention. Obviously referring to it on December 21 1939, in his response to Hirst's annual Christmas greeting, Rachmaninoff actually writes in characteristic tongue-in-cheek fashion:

From October 20 to December 10, my wife and I gave 23 concerts.

In the letter however, the composers worries soon overshadow all humor and good news:

I am very sad and worried about Tatiana. When I left Europe, I bought her a small estate forty miles from Paris, where she lives all alone, except for her little boy. Her husband, fortunately, is not at the front, but he is serving somewhere in France as an instructor. Only with such a strong character as Tatyana can one endure such circumstances. In the last two months she has managed to obtain a French passport and a driver's license. This last fact worries me no less than the war. I have never felt that she had the talent to drive.

On December 5th 1939, weeks before Rachmaninoff’s reply arrived, Arthur Hirst had already written a letter to Tatiana Conus-Rachmaninoff on his own accord.

She too cherished the thoughtful gesture. And today it survives as part of the private correspondence Tatiana carefully preserved at SENAR. Given the tragedy that in the end overtook the entire world, including Rachmaninoff and his youngest daughter, one can imagine that the letter was of particular emotional value.

[Click on the photo below to open a description sample of the letter]

The Rachmaninoff Network invites anyone who can provide substantial information about Arthur Hirst to contact us via our contact form

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