The image of Sergei Rachmaninoff as an untouchable giant with a Beverly Hills mansion hides a life built on catastrophic restarts. This deep dive begins with a Russian aristocratic family whose five country estates were gambled away by his father, a move into a cramped St. Petersburg flat when he was nine, and the deaths of two sisters, before his grandmother introduced him to the Orthodox Church whose chants and bells shaped his sound.

The episode follows his transformation from truant conservatory student to disciplined musician under Nikolai Zverev, the disastrous 1897 premiere of his First Symphony under a reportedly intoxicated Alexander Glazunov, and the three-year depression that followed. It then covers the hypnotherapy of Dr. Nikolai Dahl that preceded the Second Piano Concerto, his 1917 escape across the Finnish border on an open  ...