Georgy Petrov
Georgy Petrov was a Soviet Belarusian pianist, chorus master, conductor, and teacher. He was born in Moscow on August 28, 1888, and graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1910, where he studied with Konstantin Igumnov. He then pursued concert and teaching work.
In 1923, Petrov became accompanist to the choir at the Central Workers’ Club in Gomel. From 1927, he taught at the Minsk Music Technical School, now the Mikhail Glinka Minsk State Music College. In 1930, he helped organize and teach at the Belarusian Opera and Ballet Studio, where he worked until 1933. From 1932, he also taught at the Belarusian State Conservatory.
From 1933 to 1960, with interruptions, Petrov was chief chorus master and conductor of the State Opera and Ballet Theatre of Belarus. There he staged Reinhold Glière’s The Red Poppy (1933), Léo Delibes’s Coppélia (1935), Ludwig Minkus’s Don Quixote (1946), and Alexander Glazunov’s Raymonda (1947). From 1937 to 1945, he was chief chorus master and conductor at the Abai Musical Theatre in Alma-Ata.
At the conservatory and theatre, Petrov trained young pianists to work with opera singers and orchestral musicians and to play under a conductor. He combined teaching and accompaniment with solo concert performances. He was named Honored Artist of the Kazakh SSR in 1942 and Honored Artist of the Belarusian SSR in 1949. He died in Minsk on July 17, 1960.