Andrei Eshpai
Andrei Eshpai was a Soviet and Russian composer, pianist, teacher, and film composer. He was born on 15 May 1925 in Kozmodemyansk, in a musical family. His father, Yakov Eshpai, was a composer, folklorist-musicologist, choirmaster, and teacher, while his mother, Valentina Togaeva, was a connoisseur, amateur enthusiast, and performer of folk songs. In 1928 the family moved to Moscow, where Eshpai initially studied music with his father.
In 1941 he graduated from the Gnessin seven-year children’s music school, where he studied with V. V. Listova. During an evacuation he attended Secondary School No. 1 in Mariinsky Posad, a city he regarded as his second homeland and visited frequently in later life. After completing his earlier studies, he attended the Music College attached to the Moscow Conservatory, studying piano with R. Yu. Chernov and composition with E. I. Messner.
Eshpai graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1953, having studied composition with Yevgeny Golubev, following initial work with Nikolai Myaskovsky, and piano with Vladimir Sofronitsky. He completed postgraduate study there in 1956 under Aram Khachaturian. He also appeared as a pianist, performing his own compositions. From 1965 to 1970 he taught composition at the Moscow Conservatory, where he became a professor. He served on the juries of numerous international and Russian competitions, including piano competitions bearing Tchaikovsky’s name.
His output encompassed ballet, operetta, cantata, symphony, concertos, chamber music, choral works, songs, theatre scores, and film music. He wrote nine symphonies, including the Second Symphony, “Praise to Light”; the Third, “In Memory of My Father”; the Sixth, “Liturgical,” for orchestra, piano, and chorus; and symphonic works such as Symphonic Dances on Mari Themes, Songs of the Mountain and Meadow Mari, and Etudes for Orchestra. His stage works included the ballets Angara and The Circle, as well as the operettas No One Is Happier Than I and Love Is Forbidden.
Eshpai composed a substantial series of concertos, including two piano concertos, four violin concertos, and concertos for viola, oboe, soprano saxophone, flute, clarinet, double bass, horn, trumpet and trombone, tuba, bassoon, and basset horn. His chamber works included violin sonatas, clarinet pieces, piano sonatinas, a string quartet in memory of Dmitri Shostakovich, and a sextet for clarinet, guitar, and string quartet. He also wrote more than 100 romances and songs. Among his best-known songs are “Muscovites,” written for Mark Bernes, “Two Shores,” “And the Snow Is Falling,” and “A Song of Silence.” His “Song of Yoshkar-Ola” became the city’s official anthem in 1997.
He received major artistic honors, including the title People’s Artist of the Soviet Union, as well as major prizes for works including his second piano concerto, an oboe concerto, and Songs of the Mountain and Meadow Mari. Eshpai died in Moscow on 8 November 2015, aged 90, from the effects of a stroke. He was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.