Vladimir Deshevov

Vladimir Deshevov was a Soviet composer, one of the authors of the first Soviet operas and ballets, as well as a musical public figure and teacher. He was born on February 11, 1889, in St. Petersburg. His father, Mikhail Deshevov, was a mining engineer, inventor, and state councillor, and his mother, Anna Deshevova, née Loseva, was a chamber singer. From 1898 the family lived in Tsarskoye Selo, where music played an important role in home life. A particularly strong influence on his musical development came from his grandmother Anna Loseva, an accomplished pianist with pedagogical ability.

He first studied at the Tsarskoye Selo Gymnasium and later at the Nicholas II Realschule, graduating in 1908. During these years he became acquainted and friends with Sergei Prokofiev, with whom he later corresponded. From 1904 he attended the symphonic concerts held in Pavlovsk during the summer season, and in 1906 he took private lessons in music theory and solfeggio from the young composer A. Pashchenko. He also moved in the circle of the Arens household together with Vasily Komarovsky, Nikolai Gumilyov, Nikolai Punin, and others.

In 1908 he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory. His teachers included A. A. Winkler and L. V. Nikolayev in piano, V. P. Kalafati in harmony, A. K. Lyadov in strict style, M. O. Steinberg in instrumentation, and he also gained practical experience with the conductor A. V. Gauk. His development attracted the attention of A. K. Glazunov and B. V. Asafyev. In 1913 a piano etude by Deshevov was performed in St. Petersburg at a concert by the singer Zabela-Vrubel, and he graduated from the conservatory in 1914.

At the outbreak of war he was drafted into the army and served until the beginning of the February Revolution. He then went to Yelisavetgrad, where he worked as a secretary in the department of public education and taught piano and music theory in a city school. Later he taught in Sevastopol, where in 1921, together with Sobinov, he organized and headed a People's Conservatory. In Sevastopol he also taught theory of composition to the future composer and theorist of bell art Konstantin Saradzhev.

In October 1922 Deshevov returned to Petrograd. He belonged to the left wing of Leningrad composers and was close to the OBERIU circle. Darius Milhaud, who visited Leningrad in 1926, spoke highly of Deshevov's music, and the two maintained lively correspondence for several years afterward. Deshevov taught in music technical schools and also appeared as a conductor in dramatic theaters.

He wrote music for more than thirty dramatic productions and five musical stage productions, including the Leningrad Marionette Theater production Gulliver in the Land of the Lilliputians in 1936. Many of his works, however, were either never staged or were quickly removed from the repertory. He also worked in film, composing music for the animated film The Post (1930), based on the poem by Marshak, and for such films as Fragment of an Empire, Servant of Two Masters, and Academician Pavlov.

Among his principal stage works were the operas Ice and Steel (1929) and Hungry Steppe (1932), the ballets Red Whirlwind (1924), Djabella (1926), Jeyrang (early 1930s), Bela (1941), and The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Bogatyrs (1949), and the operettas The Baghdad Magician (1927) and Friendly Hill (1928). His orchestral and chamber works included the symphonic poem The Year 1918, Meditations for piano, Rails, Chinese Suite, Japanese Suite, Prelude, Toccata, Etude, Shaman's Dance, Samarkand Suite, Russian Fairy Tale, Russian Overture, and Leningrad.

Most of Deshevov's works remained in archives, and much of his output has not survived. Systematic study of his legacy only began later. From the late 1990s and early 2000s, his compositions began to be performed more frequently in Russia and abroad alongside the music of other representatives of the post-revolutionary Russian musical avant-garde. A number of his works were performed by Oleg Malov, Valery Popov, Anton Batagov, and others. He died on October 27, 1955, in Leningrad and was buried at the Bolsheokhtinskoye Cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Connections

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