Serge Koussevitzky
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| Sergei Koussevitzky | ||
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| Background information | ||
| Birth name | Sergei Aleksandrovich Koussevitzky | |
| Born | July 26, 1874 Vyshny Volochyok, Tver Oblast, Russian Empire |
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| Died | June 4, 1951 Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
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| Genre(s) | Classical | |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, conductor, double bassist | |
| Instrument(s) | Double bass, piano, violin, violoncello | |
| Years active | fl. ca. 1994-1951 | |
| Associated acts |
Boston Symphony Orchestra St Petersburg Philharmonic |
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| Notable instrument(s) | ||
| Double bass Karr-Koussevitzky Amati 1611 |
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Dr. Sergei Aleksandrovich Koussevitzky (Koussevitsky) (Russian: Сергей Александрович Кусевицкий) (July 26, 1874 – June 4, 1951), was a Russian-born conductor, composer, and double-bassist known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early career
Koussevitzky was born into a poor Jewish family, growing up in Vyshny Volochyok, Tver Oblast, about 250 km northwest of Moscow. His parents were professional musicians who taught him violin, cello, and piano. At the age of fourteen he received a scholarship to the Musico-Dramatic Institute in Moscow for the study of double bass and music theory. He excelled at the bass, joining the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra at the age of twenty and succeeding his teacher as the principal bassist at twenty-seven. In 1901, he made his debut as a soloist in Moscow, and won critical acclaim for his first Berlin recital in 1903. In 1902 he married his first wife, the dancer Nadezhda Galat. The same year he wrote a popular concerto for the double bass. Koussevitzky divorced his first wife and married Natalie Ushkov, the daughter of an extremely wealthy tea merchant, in 1905. At some time before this he had converted from Judaism to Christianity.[1] The couple moved to Germany. In Berlin Sergei studied conducting under Arthur Nikisch, using his new-found wealth to pay off his teacher's gambling debts.[2]
[edit] Conductor and publisher
In 1908 Koussevitzky made his professional debut as a conductor, hiring and leading a concert with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The next year he founded his own orchestra in Moscow and branched out into the publishing business, forming his own firm and buying the catalogues of many of the greatest composers of the age. Among the composers published by Koussevitzky were Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky and Nikolai Medtner. During the period 1909 to 1920 he established himself as a brilliant conductor in Europe. After the Russian Revolution, he returned to his homeland for a brief time to conduct the State Symphony Orchestra of Petrograd; in 1920, he made his way to Paris, where he organized the Concerts Koussevitzky, presenting new works by Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Maurice Ravel. In 1924 he moved to the United States, and would become a citizen in 1941.
[edit] In America
Koussevitzky was appointed conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1924, beginning a golden era for the ensemble that would continue until 1949. Over the next twenty-five years, he continued building the ensemble's reputation as a leading American orchestra, and developing its summer concert and educational programs at Tanglewood. With the Boston Symphony he made numerous recordings, most of which well-regarded by critics. His students and protégés included Leonard Bernstein and Sarah Caldwell. Bernstein guest conducted the Boston Symphony, including the 1951 world premiere of Charles Ives' Symphony No. 2. Bernstein's very last concert, in August 1990, was with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood.
[edit] Champion of contemporary music
In 1922, Koussevitzky commissioned what has come to be known as one of the greatest and most popular examples of orchestration in the repertoire, Maurice Ravel's arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's 1874 suite for piano, Pictures at an Exhibition. It was premiered by the Boston Symphony in 1923, and quickly became the most famous and celebrated orchestration of the work that had ever been made. Conductor Arturo Toscanini, who apparently had no great fondness for 19th century Russian music, considered the Mussorgsky-Ravel version of Pictures the greatest example of orchestration that had yet been produced, and performed and recorded the work for RCA Victor in 1953. Koussevitzky held the rights to this version for many years, and after his death, practically every celebrated conductor in existence recorded it.
Koussevitzky was a great champion of modern music, commissioning a number of works from prominent composers. For Boston Symphony Orchestra's 50th anniversary he commissioned Ravel's piano concerto, George Gershwin's Second Rhapsody, Prokofiev's Symphony No. 4, which Prokofiev later revised, Paul Hindemith's Concert Music for Strings and Brass, and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, as well as works by Albert Roussel and Howard Hanson.[3]
[edit] Legacy
In 1942 he founded the Koussevitzky Foundations whose charge is to foster and commission the performance of new work. Benjamin Britten's opera, Peter Grimes, Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, Aaron Copland's Symphony No. 3, and Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie are all direct results of the foundations. Among Koussevitzky's recording premieres was that of Sibelius's Seventh Symphony.
Following Koussevitzky's 1951 death, his widow, Olga Koussevitzky, presented double-bassist Gary Karr with his double bass fabricated in 1611 by brothers Antonio and Girolamo Amati in 1611. The instrument now bears the names of both Karr and Koussevitzky.
[edit] Recordings
Koussevitsky recorded with the Boston Symphony exclusively for RCA Victor. An early session was devoted to the world premiere recording of Ravel's Bolero.
Some of Koussevitsky's later recordings, including performances of Prokofiev's suite from Romeo and Juliet and first and fifth symphonies, were mastered on Victor's revolutionary magnetic sound film recording process. His very last recording, made in 1949 on magnetic tape, was an acclaimed performance of Sibelius' Second Symphony. Some of Koussevitsky's performances at Tanglewood were even filmed during the 1940s.
According to Music & Arts Programs of America, some of the Boston Symphony's recordings with Koussevitsky were issued on the RCA Camden label in the 1950s as the Centennial Symphony Orchestra. One of the albums featured Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf; while the orchestra was listed as the Centennial Symphony Orchestra and the conductor was not identified, the actual narrator, actor Richard Hale, was correctly identified. Camden often reissued historic recordings from the RCA Victor catalog with fictitious orchestral names to avoid competing with newer recordings by the same orchestra on the regular RCA label.
[edit] Notable premieres
[edit] In concert
- Scriabin, Prometheus: Poem of Fire, Moscow, March 2, 1911
- Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Paris, October 19, 1922
- Prokofiev, First Violin Concerto with Marcel Darrieux as soloist, Paris, October 18, 1923
- Prokofiev, Second Symphony, Paris, June 6 1925
- Prokofiev, Fourth Symphony, Boston, November 14, 1930
- George Gershwin, Second Rhapsody, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall, Boston, 29 January 1932
- Bartók, Concerto for Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, New York, December 1, 1944
- Samuel Barber, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Eleanor Steber as soloist, Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1948
- Copland Appalachian Spring (suite) Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1945
[edit] On record
- Sibelius, Seventh Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, HMV, London, 1933
- Roy Harris, Third Symphony, Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1939
- Berlioz, Harold in Italy with William Primrose as soloist, 1946
- Copland, Appalachian Spring (suite), Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1946
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Colin Eatock (Spring 2003). "Serge Koussevitzky Discovers America". Discourses in Music vol. 4 (no. 2). Retrieved on 2007-04-02.
- ^ Lebrecht, Norman (1991). The Maestro Myth. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Pub. Group, p. 135. ISBN 1559721081.
- ^ Wilfried D'hondt (15 Oct 2003). Serge Alexandrovich Koussevitzky. Wilfried D'hondt. Retrieved on April 2, 2007.
[edit] External links
- Koussevitzky Foundations website
- Listing of works commissioned by the Foundations
- Biography
- Biography
- Site dedicated to Koussevitzky
| Preceded by G. Varlikh |
Musical Directors, St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra 1917–1920 |
Succeeded by Emil Cooper |
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| George Henschel (1881) • Wilhelm Gericke (1884) • Arthur Nikisch (1889) • Emil Paur (1893) • Wilhelm Gericke (1898) • Karl Muck (1906) • Max Fiedler (1908) • Karl Muck (1912) • Henri Rabaud (1918) • Pierre Monteux (1919) • Serge Koussevitzky (1924) • Charles Münch (1949) • Erich Leinsdorf (1962) • William Steinberg (1969) • Seiji Ozawa (1973) • James Levine (2004) |
