Paxmahnhob?

Sounds like an 80s video game...

Seriously, I remember a vogue for the Rakh spelling about 15 - 20 years ago - it didn't catch on over here.

I had an idea that the man himself put "ff" at the end when he signed his name in America(n) 

Apparently, РАХМАНИНОВ preferred "Rachmaninoff".

[Sorry for shouting the name in Cyrillic, but it's not so easy to quote it with lower case, (unless ...).]

In Russian alphabet  X is for sound H (that in Russian language is stronger than in English).
Therefore they use CH, like in German.
I would prefer Rahmaninof, but it they spell it Rahmaninov.

Russian people in their wisdom always change voice consonant to non voice at the end of words. I think it is laziness, but it is now a rule.
Brezhnev sounds like Brezhneff, Gorbachev like Gorgacheff etc.

If one goes back to how Rachmaninoff is spelled in Russian it is with the V, but prononced with the F.

Make what you want out of it. I don't think it really matters, unless people should use different alphabet when writing his name.

The same goes for Prokofiev, that could be spelled Prokofieff.


The reason they put V at the end is because when the name is in its plural form they say Rachmaninovi (whatever goes for ы sound) you can hear that it is V there.

Where is Reiner when you need him to explain it to you in better English?

I have Russian alphabet. It is on transparent tape with red Russian letters. You have to stick the letter on top of Latin alphabeth. I have to push Shift and Alt keys and it becomes Russian alphabet. The problem is that I can not type blind in Russian. I have to type very slowly. All my Russian friends have it. They write to me in Russian and I reply in English.
Every computer has this feature. You have to get yourself sticky Russian letters from computer shop and you are in business.
Вы хорошо пишите по-русски. You write in Russian very well.

I am learning E flat major and E flat minor preludes op. 102. I think it will make it nice to play two Preludes like that.
Of course it would be nicer to play all 24 of them, but it is not possible for me.

So I.ve decided to start with something easy, but that stands a chance of musical when I play it(doesn't seem to happen with Schubert, alas), so I've settled on scriabin's op11 no 3 prelude. I know a good few of that set already, but that one never interested me properly until today. Hopefully I'll have it learned off before the week is out. Also, my copy of suicide in an airplane threw itself down the back of the piano today, so I won't be able to spend any time soon faffing about with that. Which is good, because I want to learn some new pieces, not mess about with old ones.

I can play it slowly now, but still haven't learned it off!  I got about five days practice in a row when I started learning it, then forgot about it for many weeks.  For the past week or two I've just been playing through it slowly maybe once or twice a day.  Which is doing to trick.  I have the notes now anyway: speed will come in time.  But now it's time to start learning something new.  Top of my list to check our are those pieces be Medtner that Ian recommended to me to check out.  But I started rambling through Czhawstahcowicsh's WTC book 1, and found myself for the first time being really very deeply impressed/moved with the prelude&fugue number four.  I'm pretty sure I had played through them before, but I I found myself being really moved by them.  Would be learnable without too much trouble, but I'm not really in the mood for learning a fugue at the moment (I ended up with the Shostakovich open because I was willing to make an exception of Shchedrin, whose WTC books have the same covers (I subsequently dismissed that idea: none of them, alas, have yet to really appeal to me at all :/  )).