Gardening with Rachmaninoff

Pianist-actor-playwright-producer Hershey Felder has appeared on stages across the world more than 6,000 times in original works focused on a single famous composer. His works include George Gershwin Alone, Beethoven, Maestro Bernstein, Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin, Our Great Tchaikovsky, and A Paris Love Story – Debussy. A few of his similar filmed creations have played virtually through the Ensemble Theatre during the pandemic. Felder was indeed at ETC in January 2024, but behind-the-scenes, directing The Pianist of Willesden Lane – his adaptation into a well-received one-woman show of Grammy-nominated pianist Mona Golabek’s book about her mother. 

 This month, Felder will make his live stage debut in his latest play merging music, history and storytelling. Rachmaninoff and the Tsar delves into the Russian composer’s life and career, with an emphasis on how his sense of home and family influenced his art. It’s all told through flashbacks of a fever dream, and illustrated through multiple piano performances as Felder will play excerpts from several of Rachmaninoff works, including the C# minor Prelude to his second piano concerto and his Paganini Variations. For the first time in one of his on-stage creations, Felder also appears opposite another actor, British-Italian Jonathan Silvestri, who portrays Tsar Nicholas II.

The prolific Felder offered a three-word phrase to explain his proficiency: “Very little sleep!” Indeed, the edited Q&A responses were emailed last weekend over late-night hours. 

Q. You chose to focus on the time near Rachmaninoff’s death in Beverly Hills, and his memory of encounters with Russia’s last Tsar, Nicholas II, and the Tsar’s daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia. How does this illustrate the composer’s story?

A. When I create such a work, I have to answer three (self-imposed) questions. Who am I speaking to? When and where am I speaking to them? Why am I speaking to them? The answers guide the narrative telling of the story. In this case, we know that Rachmaninoff was on his deathbed, full of morphine to dull the pain of his rapidly advancing melanoma, and he was hallucinating and mumbling stories about his history, music, his hands, his music. We have this from a doctor and nurse who were present. It was an effective way to tell a story of the essence of this composer. 

How much research went into creating an accurate story and integrating the music? How much comes from your imagination? 

The historical material that you hear is all factual. I have worked hard not to make things up when it comes to attributing events and emotions to these characters. Naturally, the set-up is hyper-theatrical. But it takes place in Rachmaninoff’s Beverly Hills garden, which can be traced back to his own comments about that very garden and why he would be there. 

This is the first play in which you have another character on stage where you can engage in dialogue rather than addressing the audience. Why now? And does this represent a new direction for you?

Story is driven by the narrative, and it was clear to me that Rachmaninoff can’t talk to his audience from a “fever dream” for two hours. We needed to experience him in a context. Having him face off with another character rather than play a bunch of characters myself – which would amount to showing off rather than telling a story – was a valuable discovery. It is also a little different for the audience, and reports are that they enjoy this kind of thing. It’s not really new, as I have interacted with many characters in the films, it is just somewhat new in terms of the composer-from-the-stage stories. It also is an antidote to, “Too much Hershey too much of the time!” 

Part of the drama is to showcase Rachmaninoff’s genius against the backdrop of history, and the struggle of art versus power. It seems that concept might be particularly resonant at this moment in America’s history.

This has come up often in talk backs with the audience, but I composed a story in and of its time. There was quite literally no effort made to somehow juxtapose “then” with “now.” That the story might resonate with current events is a surprising thing, even for me every night on stage. It is fascinating how certain stories resonate at various times culturally and historically.

You have portrayed so many famous composers. How have you been able to adapt to take on these significantly different people? To what extent do you need to subsume yourself to identify with each of them in both the writing and performance?

Submersion in acting and performing is relative. It’s an illusion. Knowing how to create that illusion and knowing how to repeat it at the drop of a hat at an appointed time is a life’s work. It comes down to knowledge and practice and thinking while practicing. And by that, I don’t just mean practicing piano, but in fact “Practice” in the grand sense of the term. Discipline, always understanding and thinking through the process, never doing anything by rote, or more popularly never “phoning it in” – and above all: knowledge, which informs the character. Imagination then takes that knowledge and forms the illusion. Rehearsal works the illusion. Concentration and the freedom to consistently and constantly experiment and investigate eventually leads to exciting and very alive performance.