Emil Mlynarski, full name Emil Szymon Mlynarski, was a Russian and Polish conductor, violinist, composer, and music teacher. He was born on July 18, 1870, in Kibartai, Suwałki Governorate, in the Kingdom of Poland of the Russian Empire, and died on April 5, 1935, in Warsaw.
He graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1889, where he studied violin with Leopold Auer and composition with Anatoly Lyadov and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. From 1890 to 1893 he toured as a violinist in Russia, Germany, and England, but later gave up his performing career.
From 1893 to 1897 Mlynarski headed the violin class at the school of the Imperial Musical Society in Odessa, the future Odessa Conservatory. Among his students there was Alexander Zhitomirsky.
In March 1898 he replaced the ailing Cesare Trombini at the conductor's desk of the Warsaw Opera and conducted Verdi's "Aida" with such success that, after Trombini's death a few months later, he was invited to take his place. From 1898 to 1903 he served as music director of the Warsaw Opera, a post he would hold again in 1919–1929 and 1931–1932. From 1901 to 1905 he was also the first music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.
From 1904 to 1907, and again from 1919 to 1929, he headed the Warsaw Conservatory and taught conducting there. His students included Paul Kletzki, Kazimierz Wilkomirski, and Henryk Wars. He also worked outside Poland, leading the Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow from 1910 to 1916, the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow from 1917 to 1918, and the conducting department at the Curtis Institute in the United States from 1929 to 1931.
Among Mlynarski's compositions, the most successful was the first of his two violin concertos, in D minor, Op. 11 (1897), which received a prize at an international competition in Leipzig in 1898. He also composed the opera "Summer Night" (Polish: "Noc letnia," 1913), as well as a number of symphonic and chamber works.
Mlynarski's daughter Aniela became the wife of the pianist Artur Rubinstein. He was buried at the Old Powązki Cemetery.
Connections
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