Vadim Salmanov

Vadim Salmanov was a Soviet composer. He was born on 4 November 1912 in Saint Petersburg. His family line traced back to Bashkir murzas; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries descendants of the family moved to Moscow, where several generations served at a church in the Dorogomilovo Cemetery. From childhood he studied piano under his father's guidance.

At the age of eighteen he became seriously interested in geology, but in 1935 he returned to music. His first attempts at composition date from that period. After private studies with A. P. Gladkovsky, in 1936 he entered the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied composition with M. F. Gnesin. He graduated from the conservatory in 1941 and almost immediately left for the front.

After serving through the entire war, Salmanov returned to creative work in 1945. He then wrote his First String Quartet, a violin sonata, and songs and romances on texts by Blok and Yesenin. Works from this period show the influence of his wartime impressions. At the turn of the 1940s and 1950s he turned to orchestral music, and an important event in his development was the creation of his First Symphony, in which he used Slavic motifs.

From 1946 to 1951 Salmanov taught at the music school attached to the Leningrad Conservatory, and from 1951 he taught at the conservatory itself; he became a professor in 1965. In the 1950s he composed a number of large-scale works, including the suite Poetic Pictures after Andersen and the poem-oratorio The Twelve on a text by Blok. His later works brought him the greatest fame, especially the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies, the Violin Concerto, and the string quartets, noted for concision, density of expression, vivid expressiveness, and strictness of form.

Vocal music also occupied an important place in Salmanov's output. In his romances for voice and piano on poems by Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Tadeusz Różewicz, the melodic line follows the contours of speech, while the harmony is original and rich. His choral compositions also won wide recognition, harmoniously incorporating elements of Russian folklore. Salmanov was one of the composers who revived the genre of the choral concerto and gave it new content.

From 1968 he served as secretary of the board of the Union of Composers of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He received the M. I. Glinka State Prize of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1970 for the choral cycle Lebyodushka, was named Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1962, and People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1972.

Among his principal works are the ballet The Human Being (1964); four symphonies (1952, 1959, 1963, 1976); the symphonic picture The Forest (1948); Russian Capriccio (1950); Slavic Round Dance (1954); Poetic Pictures (1955); Festive Ode (1961); Children's Symphony (1962); two violin concertos; the oratorio-poem The Twelve (1957); the choral concertos Lebyodushka and Brave Young Man; six string quartets; two violin sonatas; two trios; a piano quartet; a cello sonata; Monologue for cello and piano; vocal cycles on poems by Blok, Fet, Yanka Kupala, Yesenin, Lorca, Neruda, Tyutchev, and Różewicz; and music for stage productions and films.

Vadim Salmanov died on 27 February 1978 in Leningrad. He was buried at the Bolsheokhtinskoye Cemetery in the area of Saltykov Road.