Mikhail Gavrilovich Erdenko (originally Erdenkov; Romanian: Mihaîl Gavriloļič Erdę̌ko) was a Russian and Soviet violinist of Romani origin. He was also a pedagogue, an Honored Artist of the Republic (1925), an Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR (1934), and is regarded as the founder of the Erdenko Romani musical dynasty. He is also known for writing a number of works for violin in an academic yet Romani-influenced style.
He was born on 22 November [4 December] 1885 in the village of Baranovo, Starooskolsky Uyezd, Kursk Governorate, into a poor Romani family. His father was a third-generation violinist and leader of a Romani orchestra, and from earliest childhood trained him to play the violin. By the age of four Mikhail was already performing with his father at weddings, and by five he had given his first concert in Kharkiv, followed by concerts in Rostov and Yekaterinoslav. Newspapers wrote about the prodigy, and teachers of the Kursk music classes became interested in him.
At the age of fourteen, supported by patronage donations and money earned from concerts, Erdenko went to Moscow with a recommendation from A. M. Abaza to enter the music school attached to the Moscow Conservatory. In 1904 he graduated from the conservatory in the violin class of Jan Hřímalý, receiving a small gold medal and having his name inscribed on the conservatory's marble board. He then taught at a music school in Samara.
Erdenko took part in the revolutionary events of 1905 and conducted an orchestra at the funeral of Nikolai Bauman. After the uprising in Moscow was suppressed, he was tried and exiled first to Vologda and then to Arkhangelsk Governorate. Once he was again allowed to perform, he traveled widely across Ukraine, the Donbas, Kursk, Samara, Kyiv, Odessa, Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Tsaritsyn, Orenburg, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, giving concerts both in major halls and for charitable causes benefiting miners, workers, and students. His repertoire combined classical works by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Paganini, and others with his own arrangements of Romani folklore.
In 1910 he visited Leo Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, and a friendly relationship developed between them. In the same year he studied with the famous Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe in Belgium, became a laureate of the Moscow violin competition, and was invited to a professorship at the Kyiv Music School, which was reorganized into a conservatory in 1913. At the same time he expanded his concert activities, appearing not only as a violinist but also as a symphonic conductor, composer, and chamber ensemble participant.
After the October Revolution, Erdenko maintained an active artistic life and toured Russia with orchestras, including charitable ones. In 1920 he settled permanently in Krasnodar, where he organized and headed the music-theatrical committee, a symphony orchestra, an academic choir, drama and opera theaters, and the Kuban Conservatory, while continuing to perform and tour. From 1923 to 1932 he made five foreign tours as the first and only representative of Soviet violin art in Japan and China, and also visited Korea, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Germany. In 1927 he moved to Moscow, where alongside concert work he took part in some of the first radio concerts.
In 1935 he was invited to serve as a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, while continuing his performance career. He died in Moscow on 21 January 1940.
As a composer, Erdenko wrote the Sonata in Old Style for violin and piano, a number of violin pieces, romances, cadenzas for concertos by Paganini and Brahms, and for Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata. He also left several editions and transcriptions of works by Chopin, Wieniawski, Brahms, Popper, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Alyabyev, as well as accompaniments to Paganini's Witch's Dance and Etudes. His work on the opera Gypsies remained unfinished. His memory was later honored by the naming of a children's school of arts in Stary Oskol in 1956 and by the establishment in 1986 of the International Competition for Young Violinists and Cellists named after him.
Connections
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