Nikolai Peiko
Nikolai Peiko (25 March 1916 – 1 July 1995) was a Soviet and Russian composer, conductor, and teacher. Born and died in Moscow, he wrote operas, oratorios, suites, symphonies, and ballets. He received two second-class Stalin Prizes, in 1947 and 1951, and was named Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1964.
From 1933 to 1937, Peiko studied composition with Georgy Litinsky and theoretical subjects with Ivan Sposobin at the music school attached to the Moscow Conservatory. He completed his studies at the Moscow Conservatory in 1940, having entered directly into its third year to study composition with Nikolai Myaskovsky and musical-form analysis with Viktor Tsukkerman.
Peiko began teaching at the Moscow Conservatory in 1943, initially as an assistant to Dmitri Shostakovich and Myaskovsky, and soon led his own composition class. He also headed the composition department at the Gnesin Institute and became a professor there in 1958. He taught more than seventy composers, including Yuri Abdokov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Alexei Larin, and Alexander Zhurbin. He was regarded as one of the leading composer-teachers of the Moscow composition school after Myaskovsky and as an outstanding encyclopedic scholar of his time.
His style drew on Russian and Western symphonic traditions, particularly Myaskovsky’s music. In his later work he experimented with twelve-tone technique while remaining committed to traditional modal and tonal thinking. His compositions are marked by vivid, refined orchestration and poetic depth. Peiko also wrote critical articles and essays, including studies of Myaskovsky’s Symphony No. 27 and instrumental miniatures by Olivier Messiaen and Witold Lutosławski. His lifelong serious interest in chess influenced his creative thought.
Peiko composed nine symphonies between 1945 and 1992, as well as a Sinfonietta, two concert symphonies, a Piano Concerto, a Concerto for Oboe and Chamber Orchestra, a Concerto for Small Domra and Orchestra, two violin concert fantasies, chamber works, piano sonatas and sonatinas, and music for films, animation, theatre, songs, and romances. His stage works include Aykhylu, Spring Winds, Joan of Arc, Birch Grove, Abakayada, and Night of Tsar Ivan. Other notable orchestral works include From Russian Antiquity, Moldavian Suite, Seven Pieces on Themes of the Peoples of the USSR, and From Yakut Legends. His First Symphony won the 1947 Stalin Prize, and Moldavian Suite won the prize in 1951.
Peiko died in Moscow on 1 July 1995 and was buried in Domodedovo Cemetery beside his wife, Irina Peiko-Obolenskaya. The Nikolai Peiko Foundation was established in 1999, and the International Nikolai Peiko Composers’ Competition commemorates him through orchestral, chamber-instrumental, and chamber-vocal categories.