fbpx

Ƶ

Hershey Felder’s ‘Rachmaninoff and The Tsar’ Takes the Stage in Santa Monica

The play features some of the composer’s most beautiful music, including the Second Piano Concerto, the Paganini Variations, Preludes, and Symphonic Selections.
[additional-authors]
August 9, 2024
Photo by Andrea Savorani Neri

Audiences are used to seeing Hershey Felder perform solo. In 1999, the pianist and actor Hershey Felder created a one-man show, “George Gershwin Alone.” He initially thought it would run for a short time, mainly for family and friends, and then he’d move on to the next project. But something extraordinary happened: People kept coming, and the play, a combination of storytelling and music, became a huge success. People loved hearing the stories behind the music of the greatest composers, so Felder brought other beloved pianists and composers to the stage: Leonard Bernstein, Frederic Chopin, Peter Tchaikovsky, Claude Debussy and Ludwig van Beethoven. His new play, “Rachmaninoff and The Tsar,” is currently at the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica, where it will run through August 25.

Image by Stefano Decarli

But this time, the show is a little different. For “Rachmaninoff and The Tsar” he will be joined on stage by Jonathan Silvestri (HBO’s “Borgia”) playing Tsar Nicholas II. Why did he double the size of the cast? “Circumstances,” Felder told The Journal via email.

In his previous productions, the composers “spoke to those around them quite freely, whether it was Chopin to his students, Gershwin to his audience, Bernstein to his TV and listening audience, Berlin to the people of the United States, and so on.” Rachmaninoff, on the other hand, “was a very reserved person. It was anathema to have him directly address the audience. And there is a reason for the second character to be there, an important one that the play lets us know.”

When it came time to cast the role of the tsar, the choice was easy. Silvestri had already worked with Felder, playing the artist Eugène Delacroix in Felder’s film, “Noble Genius – Chopin and Liszt.” After working on that film, Felder “immediately asked him if he would be interested in playing the Tsar in this new production.” He is, Felder said, “an exceptional actor and a perfect fit” for role.

In 2021, Felder made a film about Rachmaninoff, “Nicholas, Anna & Sergei.” On his deathbed in Beverly Hills, the composer is cared for by his wife Natalya, his doctor and given morphine for his pain, which causes him to see a drug-induced vision of Tsar Nicholas. He revisits his past: His aristocratic family’s troubled history, his years at conservatories in St. Petersburg and Moscow, his depressions and creative struggles and the Russian Orthodox Church bells that inspired him throughout his life.

Like the film, “Rachmaninoff and the Tsar” Rachmaninoff remembers the time when he tried to help a Polish woman who claimed to be Princess Anastasia, the younger daughter of Nicholas II who was rumored to have survived her family’s execution. The play features some of the composer’s most beautiful music, including the Second Piano Concerto, the Paganini Variations, Preludes, and Symphonic Selections.

During the research for the play, Felder was impressed by Rachmaninoff’s kindness toward others. “I was very touched by the fact that he helped so many people throughout his life. I didn’t know that he was very supportive of helping Russians in America. He also truly believed that the Tsar’s daughter survived and helped her, which is what the play is about.” Rachmaninoff left Russia during the 1917 revolution and settled in the U.S. In 1942. At 68, he finally received his American citizenship and bought a home on Elm Street in Beverly Hills, which still stands today. Shortly after the move, he was diagnosed with melanoma. Even as his health declined, Rachmaninoff continued performing recitals until it became impossible. He died in March 1943.

Felder, 56, born in Montreal, Quebec, had performed Rachmaninoff’s works many times throughout his career. He chose to portray Rachmaninoff because he was fascinated by his life as well as his music. “I played so much of his work ever since I was a kid and to me, this was just something I wanted to investigate,” he said in a phone interview from his hometown in Florence, Italy, where he lives with his wife, former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell.

“A couple of years ago when I made the movie about all of this, one of my staff members visited Rachmaninoff’s house in Beverly Hills, as part of the research, and it turned out the current owners knew me, so I thought that was really nice,” he said. Felder shouldn’t be surprised he was known to the people who now own Rachmaninoff’s house. He has been performing for 26 years and has loyal followers, music lovers of all ages. He has given over 6,000 performances, never missing one, even when he was sick and running a fever. “Knock on wood, I never canceled a show,” he said. “People paid for it and waited to see me. I would sometimes take prednisone and hope for the best. I have gone on stage in the worst conditions, but once I’m on stage, I don’t even pay attention to it and just play.”

Felder started playing the piano when he was six years old. Neither of his parents pushed him to learn. “It was completely my idea. I demanded it. It felt completely natural to me.” The piano was also his source of comfort when his mother, Eva Surek Felder, passed away from breast cancer at only 35 years old. “I was 13 then, and it was very much an escape, even before she died, in the years when she was sick.”

The beautiful music he played soothed his pain and anguish and it also comforted his mother, who lay on her sickbed listening to her son play the piano. He didn’t only play the music, he learned about the composers. Each one of them had their own struggles, aches and hardships, be it an illness or a strong and demanding father.

The research he did for “Rachmaninoff and the Tsar,“ took him two years. “It’s all based on the history of doing shows and so you always learn something new each time.” One question he is often asked is which of the composers he has portrayed he most identifies with. “It has to be Chopin. Not necessarily the bipolarism of his character but his sensitivity. I feel very aligned with how sensitive he was,” he said.

There are other commonalities as well; his father, Jacob Felder, was born in Poland like Chopin. He spoke with Felder in English and Yiddish, as well as French, languages Felder speaks fluently.

The Eli & Edythe Broad Stage, 1310 11th St, Santa Monica CA. For tickets: RachAndTheTsar.com

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.
  • Ƶ

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

Culture

More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

  • Ƶ

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

  • Ƶ