David Mogilevsky

David Yakovlevich Mogilevsky was a Russian and Soviet musician, cellist, conductor, arranger, and professor, born on 26 January 1893 in Odessa in the Russian Empire and died on 28 September 1961 in Leningrad. He was an Honored Artist of the RSFSR from 1940 and an Honored Worker of the Arts of the RSFSR from 1957. He became especially known as the постоянный cellist of the A. K. Glazunov String Quartet.

He was born into the family of a teacher. In 1910 he graduated from the Odessa Music School in the cello class. Because of the difficult financial situation of his family, he had to begin concert and teaching work early. He taught cello at the Music School of the Simferopol branch of the Imperial Russian Musical Society.

He then worked as principal cellist and soloist in the Moscow Symphony Orchestra under Serge Koussevitzky. From 1913 to 1914 he lived in Baku, where he taught at the local Music School of the Imperial Russian Musical Society, played in the city symphony orchestra, and also appeared as a soloist. After returning to Odessa in 1914, he worked as principal soloist in the city opera and symphony orchestra.

In 1917 Mogilevsky graduated from the Odessa Conservatory, where he studied first with E. F. Brambilla and then with A. P. Merck. After finishing the conservatory he moved to Petrograd, where he won by competition the post of principal soloist in the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. He was also a soloist of the opera and symphony orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, remaining active in these institutions until 1919.

After that he worked as concertmaster and conductor at the Opera and Ballet Theatre in Yekaterinburg, and from 1920 to 1922 he was conductor of the opera and symphony orchestra in Perm, where he mounted more than twenty opera productions. In 1922 he returned to Petrograd and became the permanent cellist of the A. K. Glazunov String Quartet. With this ensemble he toured Soviet cities in 1926–1927, and from 1929 the quartet also toured abroad, including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.

As a chamber musician he performed with outstanding musicians and conductors such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vasily Safonov, and Alexander Glazunov. He wrote more than fifty arrangements for string quartet of works by Russian and foreign composers. He devoted much effort to expanding and revising the quartet's repertoire, preparing new editions, transcriptions, and arrangements, and he also took an active part in compiling printed collections of pedagogical repertoire.

Mogilevsky regularly appeared in concerts of the Leningrad Philharmonic and on Leningrad Radio. From 1938 he taught at the Leningrad State Conservatory as acting associate professor, became an associate professor in 1940, and from 1949 until his death served there as professor. During the Great Patriotic War he gave concerts at the front. His importance in Soviet musical life was further recognized in 1957 when he received the title Honored Worker of the Arts of the RSFSR. Composer Georgy Sviridov dedicated his Piano Trio to him.

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