Born in Kaluga, Rakov first studied violin at the Rubinstein Music School in his hometown, and later composition at the Moscow Conservatory with Reinhold Glière and Sergei Vasilenko.
[1] Rakov's pupils included Edison Denisov, Boris Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Peiko, Andrei Eshpai, and Alfred Schnittke.
[1] Rakov was a staunchly conservative composer who exercised a solid grasp of orchestration and melody; many of his works ventured only a little beyond the style of Alexander Glazunov and Reinhold Glière, though his expressive range is far greater than the latter.
Unabashed tonality, late Romantic harmonies, and flowing tunes were the hallmarks of his work, in which the Russian national idiom always took prominence.
He was also capable of adding an element of lightly etched irony in his shorter works, a quality not typically associated with Soviet composers".
Conductors such as Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Neeme Järvi recorded orchestral works, with violin soloists in the first concerto including David Oistrakh and Andrew Hardy.