{"id":5191,"date":"2012-09-23T01:55:08","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T05:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=5191"},"modified":"2012-09-23T01:55:08","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T05:55:08","slug":"the-spirit-of-rachmaninoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/09\/the-spirit-of-rachmaninoff.html","title":{"rendered":"The spirit of Rachmaninoff"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Valentina Lisitsa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was privileged last night to be present at a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in which a virtuoso Ukrainian-born concert pianist, Valentina Lisista, played with stunning grace and spirit. She sent me deep into Russia, sometimes under the Northern Lights. She was perfectly attuned to the composer, and brought his work into vivid life.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of how another gifted contemporary pianist who specializes in Rachmaninoff was partly mentored in dreams by the great Russian composer himself.\u00a0\u00a0Olga Kern, a lovely and gifted young Russian pianist, has won many international awards. She has a remarkable musical pedigree. Her ancestor Anna Kern inspired Pushkin to write a love poem. Olga\u2019s great-great-great-grandmother was a pianist and a friend of Tchaikovsky. Her great-great-grandmother sang on stage accompanied by Rachmaninoff. Her grandfather is an oboist still active at eighty-six as a professor at Gnesyns Music Academy in Moscow. Both her parents are pianists.<\/p>\n

At seventeen, Olga Kern was the youngest participant in the first Rachmaninoff Piano Competition in Moscow. She had a very interesting mentor. Before the second round, she dreamed that Rachmaninoff was playing a piano alone in a huge auditorium, waiting for her. He looked up at her and said, \u201cOlga, I’ve been waiting for you. You should play something for me; we have a lesson scheduled.\u201d Olga was amazed, thinking, \u201cGoodness, it\u2019s Rachmaninoff!<\/em>\u201d Still stunned, she sat down and played a piece from her competition program \u2014 the Barcarolle.<\/p>\n

Rachmaninoff listened intently. When she was finished, he said, \u201cGood. And now I’ll show you how I play it.\u201d He proceeded to play the Barcarolle in his own style \u2014 \u201cphenomenally,\u201d Olga recalled, \u201ca bit dryly, yet impulsively, without pedals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olga woke up and called out, \u201cMama, mama, I saw Rachmaninoff in my dream!\u201d Her mother was troubled by this. She asked Olga\u2019s father if he thought she was practicing too hard.<\/p>\n

Inspired by her private lesson with Rachmaninoff, Olga proceeded to win the competition organized in his name. She described the rush of energy that flowed from the dream as a \u201churricane\u201d that swept her through the second and third rounds of the contest.<\/p>\n

Prior to the dream, Olga had never heard Rachmaninoff\u2019s own rendition of the Barcarolle. This might seem surprising, given her family\u2019s musical history. But the time was 1992, post-Soviet society was a shambles, and even getting basic food was \u2014 as a Russian friend living in Petersburg at the time puts it \u2014 \u201can extreme sport.\u201d Recordings of Rachmaninoff were available only from private dealers at very fancy prices.<\/p>\n

A year after winning the Rachmaninoff competition, when Olga was on tour in Japan, she was able to purchase a CD set of his complete works. When she played his rendition of the Barcarolle, she found that Rachmaninoff played it exactly as he had done in her dream.\u00a0Olga Kern went on to honor her dream tutor by playing all his piano concertos in a tour of several South African cities to great critical acclaim. Her international career took off in earnest after she won a gold medal at the Van Cliburn Competition in 2001.<\/p>\n

I did not have the opportunity to ask Valentina Lisitsa whether she has dreamed of Rachmaninoff, or felt his presence, but I sense that the spirit of the great composer is still quite active on the musical scene.<\/p>\n

Part of this article is adapted from The Secret History of Dreaming<\/em><\/a> by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was privileged last night to be present at a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in which a virtuoso Ukrainian-born concert pianist, Valentina Lisista, played with stunning grace and spirit. She sent me deep into Russia, sometimes under the Northern Lights. She was perfectly attuned to the composer, and brought his work into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,23,20],"tags":[1469,1467,1468],"class_list":["post-5191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-dreams-of-the-dead","category-history-of-dreaming","tag-olga-kern","tag-rachmaninoff","tag-valentina-lisitsa"],"yoast_head":"\nThe spirit of Rachmaninoff - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/09\/the-spirit-of-rachmaninoff.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The spirit of Rachmaninoff - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was privileged last night to be present at a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in which a virtuoso Ukrainian-born concert pianist, Valentina Lisista, played with stunning grace and spirit. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5193,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5191\/revisions\/5193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}