Russia

Kaliningrad is the former German city of Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia ─ since 1945 a Russian enclave. Its glorious past has almost been wiped out. As for the musical history: J.F. Reichardt (°1752), E.T.A. Hoffmann (°1776) and Otto Nikolai (°1810) were born in Königsberg; Richard Wagner worked at the theatre In 1836/37.

On the huge Millennium of Russia Memorial (1862) ─ weight 65 tons ─ figure many great Russians, among them Michail Glinka (with briefcase ─ see the photo) and Bortnyansky (at the keyboard). For the Golden Age of Russian music (Tchaikovsky, Musorgsky and further on) the monument came too soon. 

Monument (2005) of Sergey Rakhmaninov, born in 1873 in the Novgorod district.

Anton Stepanovitch Arensky was born in Novgorod city in 1861; no monument for him.

The places of Rakhmaninov’s youth in the district of Novgorod are memorised here by means of photos and documentary movies: his birthplace Oneg estate, his baptismal church in Deytyari, Semyonova manor and Borisovo estate (grandmother). Some of these places may have remained.

Anatoly Lyadov obtained the estate Polynovka near Borovichi in 1884 through his marriage and spent the summer holidays here in idleness until his death on 28.VIII.1914. Exact location and present state not retrieved.

Two summer houses of Rimsky-Korsakov, belonging to different urban districts but not more than a mile apart. Both are accessible to the public and worth visiting. Perhaps at the R-K. museum in St. Petersburg exact information about the addresses can be obtained.

From the birthplace of Modest Musorgsky in Karevo only the foundation rests, there is a monument. A Musorgsky museum was established in 1970 nearby, at the monumental Naumovo estate of his mother’s family; he spent much of his childhood here. There are many authentic exhibits.

Rakhmaninov and Skryabin have appeared as pianists in the ceremonial hall of the Nobleman’s Assembly House of Smolensk. In the park opposite there is a statue of Glinka from 1885.

Mikhail Glinka was born in this village in 1804; his birthplace has not survived. The conscientious reconstruction of his paternal palace, in which he lived from 1810 until 1816 and that he frequently visited later on, was made a Glinka museum in 1982. Thirteen rooms are filled with authentic objects and documentary exhibits.

His baptismal church, having been built by Glinka’s grandfather, and the ancestral graveyard are in the village.

Tchaikovsky lived from 1891 to 1893 on the first floor of this beautiful wooden house. The Sixth Symphony Pathétique was written here. After the composer’s death in 1894, his brother Modest decided that the house and its furnishings had to be maintained and thus he did the groundwork for the fine museum, that developed into the touristic hotspot of today. There also are a Tchaikovsky archive (letters, microfilms) and a monument in the park. In 2004 a fire destroyed the roof, but the exhibits and essential rooms were saved.

There is also an exhibition about Tchaikovsky’s colleague Sergey Taneyev.

More exhibits of Taneyev can be seen in Dyutkovo, where he spent his holidays from 1906 and died in 1915. On his former house there is a plaque, but a museum came in the nearby house of a friend, the conductor Bulikov. Taneyev’s bust is in the front garden.

This village was established in the 1940s as a retreat for the elite, high placed members of the communist party ─ including Brezhnev ─ and a special area Akademgorod for scientists and artists. Shostakovich and Rostropovich had a ‘dacha’ here, Benjamin Britten was a guest.

In 1943, in the midst of the war, the members of the Union of Composers got the opportunity to continue their creative work in a safe area; a couple of ‘dachas’ were built in a forest near Ivanovo, called ‘House of the Creation by Composers’. Many composers made use of it, including Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian and Kabalevsky. E.g. Prokofiev’s brilliant 5^th Symphony and Shostakovich’s 8^th were written here.

Since 1954 workshops for young composers are organised here, the ‘Ivanovo Academy’.

Private museum with a collection of clocks and musical instruments, mostly accordeons.

The composer Sergey Lyapunov was born in Yaroslavl in 1859. He died in Paris in 1924.

The composer Sergey Taneyev was born in Vladimir in 1856.

The composer Mily Balakirev was born in Nizhnyi Novgorod in 1837.

The composer Aleksandr Dargomyzhky was born in the Tula district in 1813.

The composer Vasiliy Kalinnikov (1866-1901) was born in the Oryol district. Listen to his 1^st Symphony.

Sergey Rakhmaninov spent the summers of 1890-1917 in the house of his uncle and aunt Satin; in 1902 he married their daughter Natalya and they got the smaller house, ‘fligel’, as birthday present. A great deal of the compositions were written here.

In 1917 the couple emigrated. The ‘fligel’ was restored in 1974 and made a music school; in 1982 it became a first Rakhmaninov museum. After the reconstruction of the main house and the park in 1995, the museum was extended to the entire estate.

The composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-98) was born as ‘Wolga German’ in Engels. He is one of the leading avant-garde composers of Russia, introducing a very personal style which he called ‘polystylism’. From 1988 he lived in Germany.

Sofia Gubaidulina, another avant-garde composer, was born in Tatarstan in 1931. Her music is full of spiritual and religious associations and unusual sound combinations. Like Schnittke, she moved to Germany.

Birthplace of the great bass singer Fyodor Shalyapin (Théodore Chaliapine, 1873-1938). He was born in a, now demolished wing of this building. From the 1890s he had a glorious career; especially as Tsar Boris he left a deep impression on the audiences worldwide. From 1921 he lived in Paris. 

The Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre bears the name of Tchaikovsky. It was built in 1879 and extended in 1857 and 2010. It has only 972 seats but is one of the leading theatres in Russia. The last art director is the Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis, who astonishes the public with his revolutionary performances of operas and of symphonic music with his orchestra MusicAeterna.

During the 2^nd World War, the Mariinsky Opera and Ballet Company continued its performances in Perm.

The great impresario Sergey Dyagilev spent his youth in Perm, from 1882 to 1890. The house of the family became a gymnasium in 1895. From 1990 it is a museum and library, devoted to the man of the Ballets Russes.

Birthplace of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, °1840. The house, nearby the Ural mountains, belonged to the mining factory where his father worked; it is part of a large complex, which now includes a shop, a café, a boarding house and a concert hall. In the garden is a large Tchaikovsky monument. The museum gives a good impression of the circumstances in which the composer lived unto 1848.

In this house within the Ural mountains the Tchaikovsky family lived from May 1849 until August 1850. It was opened as a museum in 1965, sharing rooms with a music school, and fully restored in 1990. There is also a collection of folk instruments and miniature replicas on display.

The birthplace of the composer Edison Denisov (1929-96) is a beautiful wooden house for many families; Tomsk is the only place in Siberia that is mentioned in this website. Denisov was, next to Schnittke and Gubaidulina, an important representative of the Russian post-war avant-garde.

 (Photos from John Freedman’s website Russian Culture in Landmarks)