Rachmaninov

Some time ago I met a one-time colleague of mine at a concert. He asked where I was sitting; I told "in the cheap seat near the roof". He said: "If you din't go to so many Rachmaninov concerts you'd be able to afford to sit down here."
It was a joke. Sort of. He does not like Rachmaninov, I don't know why, probably has something to do with sentimentality; like a lot of people he finds the piano concertos lush with heart-on-a-sleeve sentiment. I like them, particularly the most popular, the Number 2.
Poor Rach. Towards the end of his life he felt left behind by the avante garde, the Bergs and the Schonbergs and the Weberns. A lot of composers did. There was one (name forgotten) who had good reason to feel left behind; he was practically ignored by those in positions to forward his career e.g. the BBC.
Alex Ross, in "The Rest is Noise" writes that "Rachmaninov produced only 5 major works from 1917 until his death in 1943. 'I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien to me,' Rachmaninov wrote in 1939. 'I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made intense efforts to feel the musical manner of today but it will not come."
I attended a concert two weeks ago that had a work by Rachmaninov in the program: his "Orchestral Dances" was a wonderful work that made me glad he hadn't followed the path of Schonberg etc and their twelve tone scale, whatever that is, but followed his own path which the dances reveal was a culmination of his individual style.
Unlike Schonberg and company who didn't wish to be massively popular, he did. As a friend of Berg's said: "Schonberg envied Berg his success while Berg envied Schonberg his failures."