The Conservatoire russe de Paris Serge Rachmaninoff (English translation: Sergei Rachmaninoff Russian Conservatory of Paris) is a professional music school in Paris, which conducts its courses in both French and Russian.
The Conservatoire offers individual instruction in voice and in the standard Western classical musical instruments, as well as in the balalaika and the clarinet in the klezmer and Roma traditions [1]. For studies in music theory, composition, analysis, music history, or theatre (Stanislavski System), pupils attend classes together in groups.
The Conservatoire was established between 1923 and 1931 by some of the most illustrious émigré professors from the music schools of Imperial Russia, who included Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Glazunov, Alexander Gretchaninov, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff was the institution's first honorary president and later became its namesake. In 1931, the newly constituted Société musicale russe de France took over the management of the Conservatoire, with the intention of continuing the work of the Russian Musical Society originally founded in Saint Petersburg in 1859.
Since 1932, the Conservatoire has regularly hosted concerts by prestigious musicians from across the globe, among them Vladimir Horowitz, Nathan Milstein, Gregor Piatigorsky, and Alexander Borovsky. Recognized as a public benefit organization (utilité publique) in 1983, the Société musicale russe de France began receiving subsidies from the City of Paris in 1990 to support the Conservatoire.