Nikolai Amani

Nikolai Amani was a Russian composer and pianist, born in St. Petersburg on April 4, 1872. He began appearing in concerts as a pianist at the age of eleven. His first musical training was with Nikolai Dubasov.

In 1890 he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the class of Professor Stein, and there he also studied harmony with Anatoly Lyadov. In 1897 he graduated from Anna Yesipova's piano class, and in 1900 he completed Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's composition theory class. He was a participant in the Belyayev Circle.

Amani received the Chamber Music Society prize for his String Trio in D minor, Op. 1, in 1900. As his examination work he wrote the cantata Paradise and the Peri the same year. Because of health problems, he went to Italy for treatment in 1901. While in Italy, the Milan firm Ricordi published three of his piano pieces. In 1901 his piano works were also published, including the theme and variations in A-flat major, Op. 3, the Suite, Op. 4, and collections of pieces Opp. 5, 7, and 8.

From 1902 he lived and worked in Yalta. The patron Mitrofan Belyayev gave important support to the young composer and helped him publish his works. In 1903 Amani received a prize from the Moscow Russian Choral Society for the a cappella chorus The Hot Noon Inclines to Laziness, Op. 14. Between 1902 and 1904 he wrote a jubilee cantata in honor of Mikhail Glinka, which was later performed in Yalta after the composer's death.

Amani's piano pieces were orchestrated by Alexander Spendiaryan and performed in Yalta and St. Petersburg. His musical legacy is small. It includes an orchestral overture, performed in Yalta on the day of his funeral, several romances, and vocal and piano pieces on texts by Aleksey Apukhtin, Ivan Nikitin, Aleksey Tolstoy, Afanasy Fet, and others. Altogether he left 15 opus numbers, among them a fragment from Count Aleksey Tolstoy's John of Damascus, the ballad for bass Borodino on verses by Mikhail Lermontov dedicated to Fyodor Chaliapin, and the Album for Youth, consisting of 12 pieces.

He died in Yalta on October 4, 1904, and was buried in the same city at the Polikurov Memorial. In 1979 a tombstone of Crimean diorite was installed on his grave.

Connections

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