Sergei Rachmaninoff Biography
Sergei Rachmaninoff is my second favorite composer.  The music of Rachmaninov is extremely complicated, however it is wonderful.  The style of Sergei Rachmaninoff was modernistic romanticism, or classified as neo-romanticism.  His style is very different from the classical and romanticism eras.  Sergei Rachmaninov had huge hands, hands so big that he could span 12 white keys comfortably.  To give you an idea, I can only reach 8 white keys comfortably.  This is why much of his piano music is difficult, and not as playable as Chopin.  Chopin had small hands, which is why all his music is pianistic.  The favorite key of Rachmaninoff is the minor key, and much of his music is sad, even sadder than Chopin's music.  Although Chopin did write some tragic music, it was often followed by happiness.  Rachmaninoff sometimes could write a whole piece being depressing.

Sergei Rachmaninoff is of course known for all 4 of his big Piano Concertos.  These piano concertos are extremely complicated but very poetic and musical, and even featured in a movie The Shine.  The movie focuses on the 3rd piano concerto by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and claims that it is the hardest piano score in history.  Obviously this is an opinion, and of course I disagree with that statement.  It is a very hard piano score, but there are many modern piano composers who are just maniacs and compose a score so hard that no one would even want to attempt playing it.  An example of this is the Opus Clavicembalisticum composed by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji.  This piece is insanely difficult, and makes the 3rd piano concerto by Sergei Rachmaninoff look like its grade 1.  My point is, the harder the piece is, does not mean it is better.  I think the Opus Clavicembalisticum is a piece of garbage, and many others will agree with me on that one.

The thing that makes Sergei Rachmaninoff so popular is not that he composed the great piano concerto number 3 in C minor, but the fact that ALL of his piano concertos are musically thought out well, and great works of art.  All of his piano concertos are well known to most musicians, but there is a reason.  Lets first concentrate on Piano Concerto number 3 by Rachmaninoff, the piece that was played in The Shine.  It contains a very poetic introduction, with beautiful usage of the cello.  The piano is introduced, very much in the classical style, again, very poetic.  It cleverly goes from the classical style into the modern romantic style.  Sergei Rachmaninoff blended the piano and the orchestra in a great way, admittedly better than my favorite composer Chopin.  The point that I am trying to introduce here is that most of this piano concerto is very musical, and contains few "show off" moments, moments that Franz Liszt is well known for.  Of course every composer has his flaw, and the flaw that Sergei Rachmaninoff had was that he got a bit carried away when writing these concertos, and sometimes overused chords, made chords way bigger than they had to be, thus, being a little showy.  But that is ok, as long as the music is great as a whole, and this was the case for each piano concerto of Sergei Rachmaninoff. 

The other piano concertos follow a similar pattern, and contain the same flaws as the 3rd piano concerto.  I do feel he was too showy at parts in his concertos, but for the most part, these piano concertos are impressive.  His piano solos are however a different story.  I find them to be less musical, too fast, too hard, and too showy.  It would be impressive to play a Sergei Rachmaninoff piano sonata, but musically comparing a Rachmaninov piano sonata to a Chopin sonata, Chopin wins by far.