Oleg Yanchenko
Oleg Yanchenko was a Russian and Belarusian organist and composer. He was born in Moscow on June 18, 1939, and died on January 12, 2002, in Lesnoy Gorodok, Moscow Region. He was later buried at Troyekurov Cemetery in Moscow. In 1997 he was named People's Artist of the Russian Federation, and in 1984 he received the USSR State Prize. He became a member of the Belarusian Union of Composers in 1967.
Yanchenko graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied piano with Heinrich Neuhaus, organ with Leonid Roizman, and composition with Yuri Shaporin. He also trained as an organist with Anton Heiller at the Vienna Academy of Music and with Piet Kee at the Summer Academy for Organists in Haarlem.
From 1963 to 1971 he lived and worked in Minsk as a solo organist of the Minsk Philharmonic, now the Belarusian State Philharmonic. There he was entrusted with a new 73-stop Rieger-Kloss organ, which remains the largest organ in Belarus. During the 1970-1971 season he performed a concert cycle of all the organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, becoming the first Soviet organist to carry out such a project. His work and creative activity formed the basis for the modern stage of organ concert performance in Belarus. In 1964 he also founded the Minsk Chamber Orchestra, now the State Chamber Orchestra of the Republic of Belarus.
From 1971 he was based in Moscow as a soloist of the Moscow Philharmonic. Between 1983 and 1992 he led the early music ensemble Madrigal. He maintained close artistic ties with Belarus, giving inaugural concerts on newly installed Rieger-Kloss organs at the Chamber Music Hall of the Belarusian State Philharmonic in 1984 and at Saint Sophia Cathedral in Polotsk in 1985. Many premieres of his own compositions, both organ works and ensemble-instrumental pieces, also took place in Belarus, especially at the Minsk Philharmonic.
In 1987 Yanchenko founded and headed the Association of Organists and Organ Builders of Russia. From 1994 he was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. As a performer he also recorded extensively on gramophone records; among the most significant was a recording of organ improvisations on Bach themes made at the Moscow State Philharmonic.
As a composer, Yanchenko worked in opera, ballet, symphony, concerto, film music, sonata, chamber music, and organ music. His symphonies include Symphony No. 1 "Eroica" for chorus, reciter, and symphony orchestra (1966), Symphony No. 2 "Andrei Rublev" (1977), Symphony No. 3 "White Tower" (1982), Symphony No. 4 "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" (1985), Symphony No. 5 "Michelangelo Memorial" (1988), and Symphony No. 6 "Apocalypse" (1994). His operas include Moydodyr (1964), The Fairground Booth (1970), and Count Cagliostro (1975), and he also wrote the ballet Kastus Kalinouski (1974).
His chamber and organ output included Musical Offering for cello, organ, and boys' choir (1993), Introduction, Fugue and Ostinato (1961), Interlude (1966), Improvisation (1971 or 1973), Meditation (1984), Dom zu Speyer (1986), the organ sonata Russian Lament (1993), Priere, a dedication to Lorenzo Perosi (1998), and Christmas Dreams (2000). He also composed music for numerous films and animated films, including Come and See (1985), The Sign of Misfortune (1986), and several productions made between 1970 and 1990.