Leonid Feygin

Leonid Veniaminovich Feygin, born Lazar, was a Soviet composer, violinist, conductor, and arranger. He was born on March 6, 1923, in Bobruysk, in the family of a doctor, and died on July 1, 2009, in London. He was a nephew of Vera Nabokov-Slonim, the wife of the writer Vladimir Nabokov. His musical abilities appeared in early childhood.

After moving to the Moscow region in 1929, he studied violin at the music school of the technical college attached to the Moscow Conservatory. In 1938 he transferred to the Central Music School, where he studied first with L. I. Fideleva-Kossodo and then with David Oistrakh. In 1941 he was moved to the first year of the Moscow Conservatory in Oistrakh's class, and he graduated from the conservatory in 1947. He was also a student of Nikolai Myaskovsky and Vissarion Shebalin in composition.

During the war he performed as part of a brigade of artists on ships of the Northern Fleet. From 1943 he gave solo concerts that were received with great success. His extensive repertoire included works of Russian and foreign music. As a soloist of the Moscow Philharmonic, he appeared in many cities of the USSR and toured abroad in Austria, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Albania. He also performed in ensemble with his wife, the pianist Galina Maksimova. He ended his concert career in 1957. Feygin was regarded as an important representative of the Russian violin school, and his playing, which combined ideal technique with a magnificent, powerful sound, was marked by a deep, composer-like penetration into the works he performed.

From 1953 he was a member of the Union of Soviet Composers. As a composer, he continued the tradition of Russian music of the Moscow school; critics noted the expressiveness of his melodic language and the freshness and precision of his harmony. In his earlier works, some influence of Sergei Prokofiev was felt, particularly in the predominance of homophony, while from the 1970s onward a linear-polyphonic element dominated his music.

His output covered nearly all major genres. It included the opera Sister Beatrice after Maeterlinck (1963, not staged and not published); the ballets Star Fantasy (libretto by V. Bovt, staged at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre in Moscow in 1963), Don Juan (libretto by A. V. Kuznetsov, staged at the Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre in Tashkent in 1964), Forty Girls (libretto by A. V. Kuznetsov after the Karakalpak epic, staged in Tashkent in 1967), and Faust (libretto by V. F. Ivashchenko after Goethe, 1971, not staged and not published). He also wrote three symphonies, dated 1967, 1974, and 1978, concertos for violin, trumpet, and two violins with string orchestra, four quartets, two sonatas for violin and piano, pieces for various instruments, vocal compositions, and music for theater productions and films.

Feygin was also recognized as an outstanding expert on the symphony orchestra. He orchestrated more than 300 works by Russian and foreign composers. Among his major orchestral projects were new instrumentations of Mozart's Requiem, Verdi's opera The Battle of Legnano, Bizet's opera Don Procopio, Suppé's operetta Donna Juanita, and Minkus's ballet Don Quixote. In 1963 the ballet The Snow Maiden, with choreography by V. P. Burmeister and Feygin's musical редакция and orchestration based on music by Tchaikovsky, was staged at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre and remained in the repertoire for nearly forty years. In 1999 he completed a new orchestration of G. Ya. Khirbyu's opera Narspi. He also orchestrated the state anthems of the Chuvash Republic, Angola, and Tunisia.

His emigration was described as unusual. Because of the efforts of Vera Nabokov, he and his wife were able to leave the Soviet Union. At the beginning of perestroika, Margaret Thatcher brought to Moscow for her meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev a small list of refuseniks whom she wished to take to England, and Feygin was among those connected with that process. In England he and his wife were initially warmly received by the queen, Yehudi Menuhin, and the musical elite. They performed chamber repertoire there, and some of his works were published, but the early curiosity surrounding the couple quickly faded. His archive is preserved in the British Library and at the University of Bremen.

Connections

This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.