High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (1 April 1873 – 28 March 1943), Russian composer and pianist, lived through tumultuous times. Born into an aristocratic, musical family in Semyonovo, near Veliky Novgorod, he was surrounded by music as a child and lived a comfortable life in Saint Petersburg. Moving into the house of his first official piano teacher, Nikolai Zverev, he transformed from an indulgent youth to an accomplished pianist. After completing his formal studies at the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with Pyotr Tchaikovsky, he began to compose as a "Free Artist", although almost immediately he was faced with tribulation.