Valery Sokolov
Valery Sokolov (born 27 April 1953) is a Russian composer. Born in Moscow to a family of office employees, he studied piano at the Stasov Children's Music School from 1960 to 1968, where he also began composing in a composers' workshop. From 1968 to 1972 he studied piano at the music college attached to the Moscow Conservatory, in the class of Professor N. P. Yemelyanova, while continuing composition studies as an elective.
In 1972 Sokolov entered the Gnesin Music and Pedagogical Institute, studying in both the theory-and-composition and piano departments. Aram Khachaturian taught him composition and influenced his decision to pursue the profession. Sokolov transferred to the Moscow Conservatory in 1975 and graduated from Khachaturian's class in 1977.
While still a conservatory student, Sokolov became involved with contemporary popular music, including song and dance genres. From 1976 he led a musical ensemble within the agitational theatre of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute's cultural centre, gaining his first theatrical experience and touring with concerts and productions. In 1981, as part of that theatre company, he received the Lenin Komsomol Prize. Since the 1980s he has led the vocal-instrumental group Neroli, first established at the institute's cultural centre and now operating as a studio group.
Sokolov joined the USSR Composers' Union in 1984, in its chamber-symphonic section, and took part in its “third direction” creative section, which combined classical and popular-music features. In 1985 he toured as artistic director and pianist with popular-music ensembles of the Kaluga and Khmelnytskyi philharmonic societies. He later worked with the Moscow Choral Society and the Music Youth children's philharmonic, prepared concerts for schoolchildren and young audiences, supervised the Moscow Rock Laboratory, and assisted Stas Namin in establishing his music centre in Moscow's Gorky Central Park.
From the mid-1980s Sokolov appeared as pianist with the violinist Leonarda Brushtain, performing both classical repertoire and works he wrote for her. He made his theatrical debut as pianist in a production of Three Sisters during a 1988 tour to Kyiv with the Gorky Moscow Art Theatre. He officially joined the theatre on 15 October 1989 as a pianist and répétiteur, touring widely with the company. In February 1996 he was appointed head of its music department, and has created musical scores or arrangements for more than 80 of its productions.
His theatre work includes music for productions of The Precipice, A Profitable Position, The Invisible Lady, Humiliated and Insulted, The School for Scandal, The Forest, Hamlet, King Lear, and How to Cheat the State. His rock opera Tsar Saltan, based on Alexander Pushkin's tale and on his own libretto, was staged in Vladivostok in 1999 and 2008. His concert works include a symphony; three piano concertos; a string quartet; two piano trios, including In Memory of Sergei Rachmaninoff; a viola sonata; three violin-and-piano sonatas; thirteen concert fantasies for violin and piano; the oratorio Day of Wrath; the poem-cantata From the Russian Land...; vocal cycles; and numerous works for one and two pianos. He has also written more than 200 songs and vocal and instrumental popular-music pieces.
Since 1990 Sokolov has pursued research and writing on the life and work of Pyotr Tchaikovsky. His archival work in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv and Klin informed the books Antonina Tchaikovskaya: The Story of a Forgotten Life and The Final Illness and Death of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, co-written with N. O. Blinov and published in 1994. He has published further studies, addressed scholarly conferences, contributed to a 2001 documentary on Tchaikovsky's correspondence with Nadezhda von Meck, and wrote the play The Tchaikovskys. In 2014 he devised the concept for an anniversary exhibition on Tchaikovsky at the Tchaikovsky and Moscow Museum.