Valerian Berdyaev was a Russian, Soviet, and Polish conductor and music teacher. He was born in Grodno on March 7, 1885, and died in Warsaw on November 28, 1956.
He studied conducting with Arthur Nikisch and composition with Max Reger at the Leipzig Conservatory. Berdyaev made his debut in Dresden in 1906, conducting a charity performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. From 1907 to 1921, he worked in Russia and conducted at the Mariinsky Theatre.
From 1921 to 1925, Berdyaev worked in Poland. He returned to the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1930, conducting opera and symphonic concerts in Leningrad, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Sverdlovsk. He also taught conducting at the Kyiv Conservatory. From 1930, he was based in Poland, working with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and teaching at the Warsaw Conservatory; his students there included Andrzej Panufnik.
From 1945 to 1949, he was chief conductor of the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra. He headed the Poznań Opera from 1949 to 1954, where his productions included Stanisław Moniuszko’s Halka (1950), Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1950), Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden (1951), Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1952), and the premiere of Grażyna Bacewicz’s King Peasant (1954). In 1954, he became head of the Warsaw Opera and again taught at the Warsaw Conservatory; Stanisław Skrowaczewski was among his students. Berdyaev received the State Prize of the Polish People’s Republic in 1951.