7 interesting facts about great Russian composers

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Today, world classical music is simply unthinkable without the works of Russian composers, although the domestic composer school appeared only in the 19th century. You can talk endlessly about each of the famous people. Prokofiev, for example, played chess brilliantly, Borodin was a professor of chemistry, and Rachmaninov was so scrupulous about his hands that his wife wore his shoes. Today - the most interesting facts from the life and work of Russian composers.

The Emperor defiantly left the premiere of Glinka's opera

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka is rightfully considered the founder of Russian Russian classical music and the first Russian classical composer who managed to achieve world fame.

The success of the composer was brought by his opera "A Life for the Tsar" ("Ivan Susanin"). In this piece of music, the composer managed to organically combine European opera and symphonic practice with Russian choral art. For the first time, a national hero appeared who embodied the best traits of a national character.

But the premiere of the composer's second opera, Ruslan and Lyudmila, brought Glinka a number of sensitive griefs. The premiere of the opera took place at the Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg on the same day as the premiere of Glinka's first opera - 9 December. High society did not like the opera, the audience booed it, and Emperor Nicholas I did not wait for the end of the opera at all, after the fourth act, demonstratively left the hall.

However, contemporaries noted that Glinka wrote this opera more than casually. VP Engelhardt wrote to M. Balakirev in 1894: "". And the plan of the opera, if one is to believe his contemporaries, was completely “crafted” by Konstantin Bakhturin “”. Nevertheless, the opera in its first season was performed 32 times in St. Petersburg and the same number in Paris, while, according to Franz Liszt, the opera "Wilhelm Tell" by Gioachino Rossini in its first Paris season was performed only 16 times.

It is known that Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka was in poor health. This, however, did not prevent him from traveling; moreover, the composer knew geography very well. He was fluent in six foreign languages, including Persian.

Prokofiev invented a special kind of chess

Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev is a conductor, pianist and one of the greatest Russian composers of the 20th century. He is considered a Russian musical prodigy: he composed at the age of 5, at the age of 9 wrote two operas, and at the age of 13 he became a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Having left his homeland in 1918, in 1936 he returned to the USSR. But already in 1948 the Polybureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) issued a decree accusing Prokofiev and other musicians of "formalism", and their music was declared "harmful". The first wife of the composer, a Spaniard by birth, was exiled to the camps, where she spent three years. After that, the composer lived almost without a break in the country. There he created such striking works as the ballets Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet, the operas A Story of a Real Man and War and Peace, wrote piano concerts and music for the films Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky.

Chess was Prokofiev's passion. He not only loved to play them, but also enriched this game with his own ideas, proposing the so-called "nine" chess - a board with a field of 24x24, on which nine sets of pieces are played at once. It is known that once Prokofiev played a chess game with the former world chess champion E. Lasker and was able to bring it to a draw.

Sergei Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin. It was very difficult for relatives to organize the funeral, since all of Moscow was blocked by police posts.

Scriabin - the creator of light and music

Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin showed musical talent from childhood. After graduating from the cadet corps, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, after which he completely devoted himself to music. His deeply poetic and original work was innovative even against the background of new trends in music associated with changes in the political system and social life at the beginning of the 20th century.

So, in the score of the symphonic poem "Prometheus" written by him, Scriabin included the part for the light. But the premiere, due to technical problems, took place without lighting effects.

Cambridge awarded Tchaikovsky the title of Doctor of Music without defending a thesis

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is one of the brightest figures in world classical music and a composer who managed to raise Russian musical art to unprecedented heights.

Many considered him a Westerner, but he managed in an amazing way to combine the legacy of Schumann, Beethoven and Mozart with Russian traditions. Tchaikovsky worked in almost all musical genres. He wrote 10 operas, 7 symphonies, 3 ballets, 4 suites and 104 romances.

Relatives predicted a career for him as a military officer and were categorically against entering the conservatory. It is known that the uncle of the future great composer bitterly declared: ""

The University of Cambridge, without defending a thesis, in absentia, awarded Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky the title of Doctor of Music, and the Academy of Fine Arts of Paris elected him its corresponding member.

Rimsky-Korsakov died because of his opera

Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov is a famous conductor, music critic, great Russian composer and public figure. The son of a serf and landowner, he received a good education, traveled a lot, and after returning to his homeland he managed absolutely everywhere: he was an inspector of brass bands of the Naval Department, taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, of which he was a professor, conducted symphony and opera performances, helped the manager of the Court Singing Chapel.

One of his favorite themes in his work was fairy-tale works. The operas "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", "Kashchei the Immortal", "The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia", "The Golden Cockerel" gave him the nickname Storyteller.

The opera "The Golden Cockerel" by Rimsky-Korsakov was written in 1908 based on the fairy tale of the same name by Pushkin. The censorship saw in this work a caustic satire on autocracy, and the opera was banned. This caused the composer's heart attack. He died of a second attack in the Lyubensk estate on June 21, 1908.

The first production of the opera took place after the death of the great composer - on September 24, 1909 at the Sergei Zimin Opera House in Moscow. The premiere was preceded by an announcement in the newspaper "Russian Vedomosti": ""

Composer Borodin founded the Russian Chemical Society

Alexander Porfirevich Borodin is a Russian composer-nugget. He did not have professional music teachers, and he achieved everything in music thanks to the independent mastery of the composing technique. Borodin wrote his first piece of music at the age of 9. He played the piano, flute and cello.

The most famous piece of music by Borodin is the opera "Prince Igor", based on the plot "The Words of Igor's Campaign." The idea of writing this opera was suggested to Borodin by V. Stasov. Borodin took up the job with great enthusiasm: he studied music and history of that time and even visited the vicinity of Putivl. The writing of the opera took 18 years. In 1887 Borodin died without completing this piece of music. It is known that Borodin himself managed to orchestrate part of the prologue, recitative, the arias of Yaroslavna, Konchak, Prince Vladimir Galitsky, the lament of Yaroslavna, the folk choir. Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov completed the work on Borodin's notes.

It should be noted that music was not Borodin's only passion. He was very successful in medicine and chemistry, receiving his doctorate in medicine in 1858. Borodin headed the chemical laboratory, was an ordinary professor and academician of the Medical-Surgical Academy, an honorary member of the Society of Russian Physicians and one of the founders of the Russian Chemical Society. The composer Borodin has more than 40 works in chemistry, and the chemical reaction of silver salts of carboxylic acids with halogens was named after him, which he was the first to study back in 1861.

Sergei Rachmaninoff's hands were valued at a million dollars

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff, the world's largest composer, left Russia in 1917 and settled in the United States. For almost 10 years after leaving Russia, he did not write music, touring a lot in Europe and America, where he was recognized as the greatest conductor and the greatest pianist of the era. At the same time, Rachmaninov throughout his life remained a person seeking solitude, insecure and vulnerable. All his life he sincerely worried that he had left his homeland. During the Great Patriotic War, Sergei Rachmaninov gave several charitable concerts, and all his collections were transferred to the Red Army fund.

Rachmaninoff had a unique feature - the largest keyboard coverage of any known pianist. He covered 12 white keys at once, and with his left hand played the C E flat G to G chord quite freely. At the same time, unlike many concert pianists, he had amazingly beautiful hands without swollen veins and without knots on his fingers.

Once Rachmaninov shielded himself from the paparazzi, not wanting to act, and in the evening a photo of the composer appeared in the newspaper: the face was not visible, only his hands. The caption under the photo was: "Hands that cost a million!"

Interesting factThe Norwegian Air Force Orchestra recorded a CD of works by Russian and Soviet composers, and a concert took place in Trondheim on 18 April 2013. This is the third part of the "Russian repertoire" of the Norwegian Air Force Orchestra. The album is called "The Battle of Stalingrad", and the main work is Khachaturian's suite from the Soviet film of the same name directed by Petrov. The disc contains other works by Khachaturian, and works by Dmitry Kabalevsky, Reingold Glier and Rimsky-Korsakov.

It may sound incredible, but Canadian photographer Benjamina von Vaughn performed the symphony on thirty Nikon cameras.