• Rachmaninoff was deeply introverted, and when he was a kid, his aunt’s family nicknamed him “Я сам” (“Myself”) because he kept refusing help and trying to do everything on his own.
• He always carried a golden watch with him which his teacher, Nikolai Zverev, gave him
• He had an anonymous fan nicknamed “White Lilacs” who would give him white lilacs at every single performance or holiday—in the form of wreaths, bouquets, or even (as in one case) a conductor’s baton with lilacs embossed on it.
• As a young man, he loved Leo Tolstoy’s books. His First Symphony’s epigraph referenced Anna Karenina’s: “Vengeance is mine; I shall repay.”
• The composer Alexander Glazunov called him “Sir Gay” (Seriously, I read this in a book)
• Although he rarely drank alcohol, one of his pieces, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, was so difficult that when he debuted it, he drank crème de menthe beforehand to soothe his nerves. It worked, and from then on, every time he played that piece, he drank crème de menthe for good luck.
• Another of his pieces, the Prelude in C# Minor, became so popular that at his concerts, the crowd would chant, “C SHARP! C SHARP!” to demand him to play it. He grew so tired of this he almost wished he’d never written the piece at all.
• He really liked cars and named one of them Lorelei.
• He was 6’6” (198 cm.) could stretch his hands across thirteen piano keys. This is reflected in his compositions, which are notorious for having some ridiculously large chords.
• He also spoke German, French, and English, but only felt comfortable speaking Russian, underestimating his fluency in foreign grammar. Sometimes he tried to dodge interviews by pretending he didn’t speak English at all.