Svetlanov mussorgsky biography

Evgeny Svetlanov was born in Moscow on 6 September 1928 into a family of musicians and artists. His parents were both members of the Bolshoi Theatre company and his mother, née Kruglikova, appeared as Tatyana in “Eugene Onegin ” and performed the lead role in “Madame Butterfly ” : from early childhood, Evgeny was captivated by the theatre and for example appeared as the son of Cio-Cio-San on the most prestigious lyrical stage of the Soviet Union (it was precisely in memory of this recollection that he conducted his last performance of Puccini’s opera in Montpellier, one month before his death – thus the cycle was ended).

He studied at the Gnessin school until 1951 and at the Moscow Conservatory until 1955, attending the conducting classes of Mikhail Gnessin and Yuri Chaporin, whose oratorios and cantatas he subsequently recorded; his piano teacher was the great Heinrich Neuhaus ; his conducting mentor was Alexander Gauk, the founder of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra in 1936 and an emblematic figure of modern interpretation. As Svetlanov explains, “Before the Revolution, even t

Person

Yevgeny Svetlanov

Conductor , Composer , Piano

Life

Born: 1928-09-06, Russia

Died: 2002-05-03, Russia

Information: Wikipedia

Performances

147 Performances

147 PerformancesAll items

Performance

“Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity.” – Modest Mussorgsky

Like Borodin, Mussorgsky was one of those rare men in history that was able to achieve greatness in two distinct fields: in his case, music and drinking. Mussorgsky was in fact such a consummate drunk, that even as an established composer he had to hold down a second job as a civil servant to fund his alcoholism. Yet Mussorgsky was also one of the most raw and original composers in history. He wrote from the gut, shunning the idea of receiving any sort of formal training, and his music is undoubtedly some of the most powerful and imaginative ever written. To Mussorgsky, music was first and foremost an expression of the human condition, and in his compositions he sought to create, to use his own words, “an artistic reproduction of human speech in all its finest shades.”

Following in his family’s military tradition, Mussorgsky initially began his career in the army. It was in Cadet School, a place known for being harsh on new recruits, that he first turned t

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