Nikolai Tcherepnin

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Nikolai Nikolayevich Tcherepnin (May 15 [O.S. May 3] 1873 – 26 June 1945) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He was born in Saint Petersburg and studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He conducted for the first Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

Contents

[edit] Life

Nikolai Tcherepnin was born in 1873 to a well-known and wealthy physician who shared the same name. The elder Nicolai moved in elite circles of artists including Fyodor Dostoevsky and Modest Mussorgsky. Young Nikolai's mother died when he was a baby, and when his father remarried, was replaced by an ambivolent stepmother. As a child, Nikolai's father beat him regularly and enforced a general code of strict discipline[1].

At his father's insistance, Nikolai earned a law degree, though during this time he composed steadily. In 1895 he graduated with his degree in law from the University of St. Petersburg. In 1898, he earned a degree in composition under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and a degree in piano under K.K. Fan-Arkh. His talents and high family status earned him a job as the orchestral teacher at the Court Chapel in 1899. For six years he taught there before returning to the St. Petersburg Conservatory to teach there. During his 13 year tenure (from 1909 onward as professor) he taught many notable students, most famously the young, stubborn Sergei Prokofiev[2]. In 1907, during his time at the Conservatory, he wrote possibly his most famous work, Le Pavillon d'Armide. Two years later, Tcherepnin conducted the ballet at the premiere performance of Diaghilev's legendary Ballets Russes. He conducted for the entire first season and returned to conduct in 1911 and 1912. In addition to his professorship and his commitments with the Ballet, in 1908, he became conductor at the Mariinsky Ballet. At this post, he directed the premiere of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Golden Cockeral[3].

From 1905 to 1917 he was principal of the conservatory of St. Petersburg, where he taught conducting. In 1918 he was invited to take the post of director of the National Conservatory of Tbilisi, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Following the Bolshevik takeover of Georgia in 1921, he moved to Paris and lived there for the rest of his life.

He was the father of the composer and pianist Alexander Tcherepnin.

[edit] Works

[edit] Opera

  • The Matchmaker (1930)
  • Vanka the Steward (1933)

[edit] Ballet

  • Le Pavillon d'Armide (1907)
  • Narcisse et Echo (1911)
  • The Masque of the Red Death (1915)
  • Bacchus (1922)
  • A Magical Russian Fairytale (1923)
  • The Romance of the Mummy (1924)

[edit] Choral

  • 2 Choruses (1899)
  • The Song of Sappho (1899)
  • The Descent of the Virgin Mary to Hell (Oratorio, 1934)

[edit] Orchestral

  • La princesse lointaine (prelude to a play by E. Rostand), Op. 4 (1896)
  • Macbeth (after act 4, scene 1), Op. 12 (1902)
  • From Land to Land (1903)
  • Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor, Op. 20 (1905)
  • Mar'ya Morevna (symphonic poem) (1909)
  • The Enchanted Kingdom (1910)
  • 6 Musical Illustrations to Pushkin’s ‘Tale about the Fisherman and the Fish’ (1917)
  • Destiny (1938)

[edit] Chamber Music

  • Lyrical Poem, for string quartet (1898)
  • Melody, for violin and piano (1902)
  • 5 Pieces for Piano (1904)
  • 6 Horn Quartets (1910)
  • The Alphabet in Pictures, for Piano (1910)
  • Cadence fantastique, for Violin and Piano (1915)

[edit] Orchestrations and Completions

  • Musorgsky: Sorochinsky Fair (1923)
  • Sokolovsky: The Miller-Wizard, Cheat and Matchmaker (1925)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Nikolai's biography on the Tcherepnin Society Website [1]
  2. ^ See article on the Tcherepnin family in the Grove Dictionary [2]]
  3. ^ Naxos's biography [3]

[edit] External links


[edit] Sources

Tcherepnin, Nikolay by Christopher Palmer, in 'The New Grove Dictionary of Opera', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) ISBN 0-333-73432-7

Savenko, Svetlana, et al. "Tcherepnin: (1) Nikolay Tcherepnin". 2002. New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 7 June 2008. [4]

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