Alexei Stanchinsky
Alexei Stanchinsky was a Russian composer and pianist, born in Obolsunovo on March 21, 1888. His father was a chemical engineer at a dye factory and later worked as a factory inspector, so Stanchinsky spent part of his childhood in Vladimir, Tver, Pskov, and Tallinn. He showed an early gift for music, spending much of his time at the piano and beginning to compose at about five or six years old.
In 1899, his father bought the family estate at Logachyovo in Smolensk Province. Stanchinsky wrote most of his works there. He studied piano privately in Moscow with Joseph Levin and Konstantin Eiges, and studied theory and composition with Alexander Grechaninov. In 1905, Grechaninov introduced him to Sergei Taneyev, who advised him to continue studying harmony and composition with Nikolai Zhelyayev.
After graduating from a Smolensk gymnasium in 1907, Stanchinsky entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied piano with Konstantin Igumnov. He continued composition and orchestration lessons with Zhelyayev and studied counterpoint and musical forms with Taneyev. Following his father's death in 1910 and a period of serious illness, he left the conservatory. He returned to composing later that year and resumed his studies with Taneyev and Zhelyayev.
In March 1914, Stanchinsky performed his own works at a concert for young pianists at the Moscow Conservatory. Critics singled him out as a notably talented and original composer, and Moscow musicians welcomed his work. He met his four-year-old son, Andrei, for the first time in the summer of 1914. Stanchinsky died near Logachyovo on October 6, 1914, aged 26, and was buried at the Church of the Transfiguration in Novospasskoye.
Stanchinsky’s output was chiefly for piano and includes mazurkas, études, nocturnes, preludes, canons, fugues, variations, and two sonatas. His works combine a strongly melodic style drawing on Baroque and Romantic music and Russian folk material with inventive counterpoint. In later pieces he experimented with asymmetrical meters, concise phrasing, and combinations of different scales and modes. He also developed the piano genres of the sketch and the prelude-canon. His other works include ten Scottish songs to poems by Robert Burns and a piano trio.
Only four of his sketches were published during his lifetime, with eight more appearing before 1917. Editions of his music began to appear in small print runs in the 1920s, and publication resumed in the 1960s. A complete edition of his piano works, prepared by Irina Lopatina, appeared in 1990. Pianist Olga Solovyova later made the first complete recording of those works, released as a two-disc set.