Grigory Korchmar

Grigory Korchmar was a Soviet and Russian composer, pianist, music teacher, and musicologist. He was born on December 11, 1947, in Baltiysk, Kaliningrad Region, USSR, and died on November 17, 2025, in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was honored as a Merited Artist of the Russian Federation in 1996.

Korchmar graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad Conservatory in two specialties: composition, where he studied in the class of Vladislav Salmanov, and piano, where he studied in the class of Pavel Serebryakov. Throughout his creative life he combined composing with performing activity, appearing as a pianist and harpsichordist in the chamber ensemble St. Petersburg Soloists.

He was the author of 150 works in various genres. His output included three operas, four symphonies, two sinfoniettas, eleven instrumental concertos, single-movement symphonic works, cantata-oratorio compositions, choral cycles, chamber vocal and instrumental works, and music for children and young people. He also created numerous transcriptions of music by other composers for a wide variety of performing forces.

Among his known compositions are Sonata dolorosa for cello and piano, a Concerto for trumpet and string orchestra, Dear Sergei Sergeyevich!, a concerto-message to Sergei Prokofiev for violin and orchestra, the piano poem ... Whom My Soul Loves ..., Goodbye, My Dear Friend, a fantasy on a theme by Valery Gavrilin for two pianos, Lensky's Quarrel with Onegin, a waltz-paraphrase for violin and piano, and White Nights Serenades, or Petersburg Serenades, a suite for guitar. His vocal cycles included Songs of Sorrow and Consolation, Reflections, Pushkin Epigrams, and Songs of Separation.

Korchmar taught at the Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University as a professor in the department of musical upbringing and education. From 2009 until the end of his life, he was professor of the department of special composition and improvisation at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory. He also served as artistic director of the international festival Petersburg Musical Spring and was chairman of the board of the St. Petersburg Composers' Union from 2006 to 2022.

His distinctions included first prize at the Sergei Prokofiev International Competition, the St. Petersburg Government Prize, the Medal of the Order For Merit to the Fatherland, 2nd class, the Golden Pushkin Medal, and a 2008 presidential grant for the project From the Golden Archive of Petersburg Music. He died in St. Petersburg in his seventy-eighth year.

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