Dmitry Blagoy
Dmitry Blagoy (13 April 1930, Moscow – 13 June 1986, the settlement of Soviet Writer, Moscow Oblast) was a Soviet pianist, teacher, composer, and musicologist. He was named an Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1984.
He was the only son of the Pushkin scholar Dmitry Blagoy and the literary scholar Vera Nechayeva. In 1936, on the recommendation of Professor Alexander Goldenweiser, he entered the Central Music School at the Moscow Conservatory. He studied piano with Yelena Khoven, a pupil of Goldenweiser, and later with Goldenweiser himself; he studied composition with Nikolai Peyko.
Blagoy graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in piano in 1954, studying with Goldenweiser, and completed a composition degree with Yuri Shaporin in 1957. In 1958 he finished postgraduate piano studies as Goldenweiser's assistant. From 1959 he taught piano and chamber ensemble at the Moscow Conservatory, becoming an associate professor in 1968. His pupils included Vladimir Afanasyev and Pavel Meshchaninov.
A member of the Union of Soviet Composers from 1958, Blagoy became a soloist of the Moscow Philharmonic in 1960. In 1970 he defended a candidate dissertation at the Moscow Conservatory entitled “Alexander Goldenweiser as Editor: Problems of Musical Textology.” From 1972 he presented a Moscow Philharmonic series, “Dmitry Blagoy Plays and Talks.”
He made around 300 recordings for the State Television and Radio Fund collection and released fourteen records. Blagoy also published about 300 articles and reviews, and hosted educational radio and television broadcasts, including programmes on early Russian music. He rediscovered and restored to performance works by Mikhail Glinka, Alexey Zhilin, Dmitry Kashin, Osip Kozlovsky, Ivan Laskovsky, and Lev Gurilyov. A specialist in Goldenweiser's legacy, he prepared an edition of Beethoven's piano sonatas in Goldenweiser's editorial version and compiled and edited a collection of materials about him.
As a composer, Blagoy wrote the “Fairy-Tale Sonata,” published in 1958; “Variations on a Russian Theme” (1960); “Brilliant Capriccio” (1960); “Preludes” (1962); the two-book “Album of Pieces” (1969–71); “Four Moods” (1971); a string quartet (1968); “Living Silence,” to words by Valentin Berestov (1966); and “Joke” for piano, among other works. His publications included Scriabin's Études (Moscow, 1963) and Selected Articles on Music (Moscow, 2000).
Blagoy died at his country house in the settlement of Soviet Writer on 13 June 1986 and was buried in Khovanskoye Cemetery.