Born to an aristocratic family, Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) showed extraordinary musical talent from a young age. His earliest success was the Prelude in C-sharp minor, which earned him very little money but made his reputation. Most of his music was composed prior to 1918. When he and his family fled the Communist revolution, he was forced to curtail his composing in order to earn a living in the West as a concert pianist. In that capacity, he was regarded as one of the greats of his time. While his lush, Romantic, and determinedly old-fashioned music has gone through peaks and troughs in its critical reputation, it has never fallen out of style among conductors and pianists.