Vladimir Shcherbachov

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Vladimir Vladimirovich Shcherbachov (Shcherbachyov, Shcherbachev) (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Щербачёв, born on January 24, 1889, Warsaw; died on March 5, 1952, Leningrad) was a Russian composer of the Soviet era.

He studied with Maximilian Steinberg, Anatoly Lyadov, and Jasep Vitols (Joseph Witol) at the St. Petersburg Conservatoryfrom 1908 to 1914. While there he also worked as a pianist for Sergey Diaghilev and taught theory. He served in World War I and then worked in Soviet government music positions. In 1918-1923 he worked as a lector and ran the musical department of the Narkompros. He later became a professor at the Leningrad Conservatory (1923-1931 and 1944-1948) and the Tiflis (Tbilisi) Conservatory. He counted Boris Arapov, Vasily Velikanov, Evgeny Mravinsky, Gavriil Popov, and Mikhail Chulaki among his pupils, as well as various others.

Shcherbachov's 2nd Symphony received what is likely it's U.S. premiere on Friday, January 25, 2008, in a performance by the American Symphony Orchestra directed by Leon Botstein, as part of a program dedicated to "Russian Futurists," which included music by Shcherbachov's student, Gavriil Popov, as well. The concert, held at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, featured soloists Marina Poplavskaya, soprano, and Michael Wade Lee, tenor, with the Concert Chorale of New York (prepared by their director, James Bagwell). According to ASO staff members, Maestro Botstein obtained a photocopy of the original manuscript score, which is unpublished, from a Russian archive, and arranged to have orchestra parts extracted specially for this performance. The piece ran about an hour. The lyrics are from poetry by Alexander Blok, and the piece was identified on the program with the name "Blokovskaya." The style of the music was quite romantic, by contrast to the more dissonant and futurist works on the program, and indeed seemed anachronistic for a work that was written in the mid-1920s in Soviet Russia, but the resuscitation was successful with the audience and the piece deserves to be heard again and recorded.

[edit] Works

• Anna Kolossova, opera (1939, unfinished);
• Tabachny Kapitan, operetta (1943);
• Five symphonies:

No. 1 (1914),

No. 2 (with soloists and chorus, 1925);

No. 3 (Symphony-Suite, 1931);

No. 4 (Izhorskaya, with soloists and chorus, 1935);

No. 5 (Russian, 1948, 2nd version in 1950);

• Two Suites; The Thunderstorm and Peter I;
• Nonet for 7 instruments, voice and dancer (1919);
• Suite for string quartet (1939) and other chamber music;
• Two piano sonatas and other piano works;
• Various Romances;
• Film music:

The Thunderstorm (after Alexander Ostrovsky, 1934);

Peter I (1937-1939);

Polkovodets Suvorov (1941)

[edit] Further reading

• Don Randel, The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music. Harvard, 1996, p. 831.
• Genrich Orlov, Vladmir Vladimirovich Shcherbachov (Leningrad, 1959)