- Issay Dobrowen
Issay Alexandrovich Dobrowen ( _ru. Исай Александрович Добровейн) (OldStyleDate|27 February|1891|15 February–
9 December 1953 ) was aRussia n-Norwegianpianist ,composer and conductor.He was born Itschok Zorachovitch Barabeitchik in
Nizhny Novgorod ,Russian Empire . He left theSoviet Union in 1923, and became a Norwegian citizen in 1929.He once played Beethoven's "Sonata Appassionata" to
Vladimir Lenin , whose favorite piece of music this was. Dobrowen directed the first German performance of Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" (Dresden , 1922). Dobrowen went on to conduct theOslo Philharmonic orchestra (1928-31), at the Budapest Opera (1927-28), and theSan Francisco Symphony (1931-34) and theGothenburg Symphony (1941-53) orchestras.Dobrowen worked with both
Nikolai Medtner andArtur Schnabel , among other well known musicians. He was also a close friend of the Russian writerMaxim Gorky , and the Norwegian explorerFridtjof Nansen .He conducted his last concert with the
Oslo Philharmonic in December 1952. His last concert was held on19 January 1953 , when he conducted the Stuttgart Orchestra. He died 9 December 1953 inOslo at the age of 62.Relatively unknown today, he wrote very beautiful piano music, reminiscent of
Sergei Rachmaninoff . Interest in Dobrowen as a composer has started to increase, thanks to a small number of new recording projects, involving the editing and collation of orchestral parts for his Piano Concerto in C sharp minor (Op. 20). As well as the concerto, of which the style and colourful orchestration ingeniously recall Medtner, Rachmaninoff andAlexander Scriabin , adding his own vein of attractive melancholy, three of the piano sonatas and a violin sonata have also appeared on disc in recent times.External links
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* [http://www.norge.ru/music/dobrovejn.html Issay Dobrowen biography] ru icon
* [http://www.simax.no/artikkel.php?id=953 Issay Dobrowen biography from Simax]
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