Valerian Bogdanov-Berezovsky
Valerian Mikhailovich Bogdanov-Berezovsky was a Russian Soviet composer, musicologist, ballet scholar, and teacher. He was born on July 17, 1903, in the village of Starozhilovka near St. Petersburg, in the Russian Empire, and died on May 13, 1971, in Moscow. In 1968 he was named Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
He was born into the family of a St. Petersburg physician who served as a court doctor. He studied at the Nicholas Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg. In 1927 he graduated externally from the Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied harmony and orchestration with Maximilian Steinberg, counterpoint with Sergei Lyapunov, composition with Vladimir Shcherbachyov, and polyphony with Leonid Nikolayev.
From the early 1920s he was a regular contributor to Leningrad newspapers and journals, and from the 1930s also to Moscow periodicals, publishing articles and reviews on music, musical theater, and ballet. Alongside Boris Asafyev and Ivan Sollertinsky, he soon became one of the leading music critics of Leningrad. He wrote more than 250 books and articles on Russian classical and Soviet music, and on opera and ballet theater.
His professional work combined composition, scholarship, criticism, administration, and teaching. From 1929 to 1932 he chaired the composers' section of the Leningrad branch of Vseroskomdram. In 1940-1941 and 1945-1949 he taught the history of Soviet music at the Leningrad Conservatory, and in 1945-1948 he served as acting professor in the department of the history of Russian and Soviet music. From 1941 to 1944 he was chairman of the board of the Leningrad branch of the Union of Soviet Composers, and from 1961 he was deputy chairman of its board. He was also a senior research fellow at the Leningrad Institute of Theater and Music from 1946 to 1951.
He held important posts in the musical theater of Leningrad. In 1946-1948 he was deputy artistic director for repertoire at the S. M. Kirov Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theater, and from 1951 to 1962 he headed the repertoire department of the Leningrad Maly Opera and Ballet Theater. From 1969 he was chief editor of the Leningrad branch of the publishing house Soviet Composer. During the war years he was awarded the medal For the Defense of Leningrad in 1943.
As a composer, Bogdanov-Berezovsky wrote in a wide range of genres. His stage works included the operas or music-theater works The Daughters of Yermak, or The Border, The People of Leningrad, Nastasya Filippovna, The Girl with Wings, The Son of the Regiment, and The Seagull, as well as his Second Symphony, subtitled A Tale of a Hero of Our Time. He also composed concert works such as a Piano Concerto, a Violin Concerto, Ballads for bass and orchestra to words by Vladimir Mayakovsky, a partita for piano and orchestra, pieces for cello and orchestra, and orchestral suites.
His chamber and piano music included a suite for violin and piano, the poem Nightingale Garden for violin and piano after Alexander Blok, sonatas for piano, violin and piano, cello and piano, viola and piano, and two cellos, as well as a piano quintet, 24 Preludes for piano, and the piano cycle Russian Landscapes. He also wrote vocal cycles to his own texts and to poems by Sergei Yesenin, Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Samuil Marshak, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, along with songs such as There Will Be Work for You, Toward the Battles, and The Motherland Calls.
His literary and critical legacy was especially extensive in ballet and music history. He published books on ballets including The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, The Red Poppy, Sleeping Beauty, and Swan Lake, and books on major ballet figures and institutions such as Galina Ulanova, Agrippina Vaganova, Konstantin Sergeyev, and the S. M. Kirov Leningrad State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater. In music criticism and scholarship he wrote on Chopin, Asafyev, Tchaikovsky, Soviet opera, Maximilian Steinberg, Vladimir Shcherbachyov, Yury Shaporin, Yevgeny Mravinsky, and Alexander Veprik, and edited literary materials connected with Mikhail Glinka. His articles and books made him a significant voice in Soviet writing on music and ballet.
Connections
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