Alexey Kozlovsky
Alexey Kozlovsky (1905–1977) was a Soviet composer, conductor, and teacher. He was born in Kyiv and died in Tashkent. The son of a secondary-school teacher, he moved to Moscow in 1923 and studied with Boris Yavorsky at the First State Music Technical School. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1931, where he studied composition with Nikolai Myaskovsky, counterpoint and strict style with Nikolai Zhelyayev, and orchestration with Sergei Vasilenko. His graduation work was a Heroic Overture for symphony orchestra. He also studied conducting with Alexander Hessin and was influenced by the conducting of Vasily Suk.
Kozlovsky conducted at the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre from 1931 to 1933 and at the Uzbek Opera and Ballet Theatre from 1938 to 1941. He moved to Tashkent in 1936 and remained there for the rest of his life. From 1949 to 1963, he was chief conductor and artistic director of the Uzbek Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. He taught at the Tashkent Conservatory from 1943, became a professor of composition and conducting in 1957, and headed its composition department in 1949–1954 and from 1962. From 1972, he also headed the orchestration department.
Among his major works are the opera Ulugh Beg, produced in Tashkent in its 1942 and 1958 versions, and the symphonic poem Tanovar, based on a women’s love song recorded in several versions from Halima Nasyrova. He later used the poem as the basis for a ballet of the same name, staged in Tashkent in 1971. His other stage works include the operas The Exploit of Bektash and Archer Afdal, and the ballets Glory to October and Tanovar. He also wrote orchestral and vocal works and music for films including Tahir and Zuhra, The Adventures of Nasreddin, Road Without Sleep, and Daughter of Ferghana.
Kozlovsky was a friend of Anna Akhmatova and composed several romances to her poems. She dedicated the poem “The Moon’s Appearance,” from the cycle The Moon at Zenith (1944), to him. He received the title Honored Artist of the Uzbek SSR in 1944 and People’s Artist of the Uzbek SSR in 1955.