Vasily Zolotarev


Vasily Andreyevich Zolotarev, also romanized as Zolotaryov, was a Russian composer and music teacher of Greek ancestry.

Biography

Vasily Zolotarev was born to a Greek family named Kuyumzhi or Kouyoumtzis in the city of Taganrog in 1872. The family name was later changed to the more Russian Zolotarev. He studied music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory under direction of Mily Balakirev in the class of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, graduating in 1900. Zolotarev lectured at Moscow Conservatory, at the Belarus State Academy of Music in 1933–1941, and other conservatories. Among his students in Minsk was Mieczysław Weinberg.
Zolotaryov was a prolific composer and left behind a large body of works: three operas, ballets, seven symphonies, three concerti, cantatas, romances, six string quartets, and other works. Among his stage works are: The Decembrists, revised as Kondraty Ryleyev, libretto by Yasinovsky,1957, Khvestko Andyber, 1928. He also wrote the operetta Rikiki, the opera Ak-Gulon on Uzbek Themes and the ballet Knyaz’-ozero . Zolotaryov's personal archive is kept at the Belarusian State Archives-Museum of Literature and Art in Minsk. His 7 symphonies, the suite from the ballet Prince-lake and fragments from the opera Decembrists were recorded by the Belarusian State Symphony Orchestra. Melodiya Records Company produced three LPs in 1974, dedicated to the 100-year-jubilee of composer's birth. There is also a recording of his 6th Symphony My Homeland and some of his ballet music in the archives of Belarus TV–Radio Company.

''Rhapsodie hébraïque''

The New York Times wrote of Zolotarev's Rhapsodie hébraïque that it was "based on Hebrew melodies now used in Russia... among the Jewish families of the lower classes.... found that upon a Hebrew racial idiom there had been grafted some of the characteristic of Russian music just as the irreducible language of the Jews in any country is overlaid by a few words or modes of expression belonging to the land of their environment. Thus the melodies... are the musical equivalent of Yiddish." They described the melodies as "built upon an Oriental scale... earmark is an augmented interval instead of that found in the diatonic scale between the third and fourth notes.

Selected works

;StageDecembrists, Opera ; new edition Kondrati Ryleev, 1957Prince Lake, Ballet ; won the Stalin Prize in 1950
;Orchestral
  • Symphonies
  • * Symphony No. 1, Op. 8
  • * Symphony No. 2, The Year 1905
  • * Symphony No. 3, The SS Chelyuskin
  • * Symphony No. 4, Belorussian
  • * Symphony No. 5, The Year 1941
  • * Symphony No. 6, My Motherland
  • * Symphony No. 7 Fête villageoise, Overture in F major, Op. 4 Rhapsodie hébraïque, Op. 7 Ouverture-fantaisie, Op. 22
;Concertante
  • Concerto for cello and orchestra
;Chamber musicSuite in the Form of Variations for violin and piano, Op. 2
  • String Quartet No. 1, Op. 5
  • String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 6 2 Novelettes for violin and piano, Op. 11
  • Piano Quartet in D minor, Op. 13
  • String Quintet in F minor for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos, Op. 19
  • String Quartet No. 3 in D major, Op. 25
  • Trio for violin, viola and piano, Op. 28
  • String Quartet No. 4 in B major, Op. 33 Eclogue in A minor for viola and piano, Op. 38
  • Sonata for violin and piano, Op. 40
  • String Quartet No. 5 in G major, Op. 46 Capriccio on a Hebrew Melody for violin and piano
  • Trio for violin, cello and piano
  • String Quartet No. 6 "on Russian Folk Themes" Poème for cello and piano
;Piano
  • Sonata, Op. 10 Trois Préludes Op. 18 Ukrainian Songs, 30 Short Pieces for piano 4-hands, Op. 15
  • Sonata No. 2, Op. 42 4 Pieces, Op. 43 Trois récits, Op. 44
;ChoralParadise and the Peri, Cantata ; awarded the Rubinstein Prize
;Vocal4 Songs for high voice and piano, Op. 1 4 Songs for voice and piano, Op. 16 6 Songs for low voice and piano, Op. 17
;LiteraryFugue: A Guide to the Practical Study, Moscow 1956Memories of My Great Teachers, Friends and Comrades, Moscow 1957

Awards