Nikolay Myaskovsky

During the opening decades of the twentieth century, Nikolay Myaskovsky emerged as a central Russian composer and teacher whose accomplishments earned him five Stalin Prizes together with an honorary doctorate from the Moscow Conservatory. Born in 1881 inside the Modlin Fortress in Poland while it remained under Russian military occupation, he was the son of an engineer employed by the Russian army who also lectured at the Military and Engineering Academy in St. Petersburg. Although piano and violin lessons formed part of his childhood, family expectations directed him toward a military career. Following his mother’s death in 1890 he was raised by an aunt who had once sung at the St. Petersburg Opera and who urged him to pursue music; his schooling took place at Russian military institutions that eventually included the academy where his father taught. While fulfilling cadet duties he performed in the choir and orchestra and kept up his instrumental studies. Upon completing officer training in 1902 he served with an engineering battalion in Moscow, where harmony lessons from Reinhold Gliere prompted him to contemplate leaving the army for a musical life.

Transferred to St. Petersburg in autumn 1903, he began studies in orchestration and form with Ivan Krïzhanovsky, a former pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Myaskovsky left the battalion in 1906 to enter the St. Petersburg Conservatory, studying with Anatol Lyadov, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Jāzeps Vitols; there he formed a close friendship with fellow student Sergey Prokofiev. During his third year he wrote Symphony No. 1, which secured a scholarship covering the rest of his tuition. After graduating in 1911 he wrote music criticism, gave private lessons, and continued composing until World War I recalled him to uniform and sent him to Austria, where he served three years before finishing the conflict as an engineer in Estonia. The October Revolution prolonged his military obligations, yet he resumed composition around 1917. Discharged in 1921, he joined the faculty of the Moscow Conservatory.

Recognition beyond Russia arrived in the mid-1920s once his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies reached foreign audiences. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s he produced further symphonies, piano sonatas, and string quartets. Over nearly three decades at the conservatory he attracted numerous students, among them Aram Khachaturian, Dmitri Kabalevsky, and Vissarion Shebalin, and his generous support of younger musicians earned him the epithet “the musical conscience of Moscow.” He remained productive until months before his death from cancer in 1950. Recordings of his music have been made by Idil Biret and Mstislav Rostropovich, and more recently by Vasily Petrenko with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.