Igor Markevitch

Igor Markevitch.

Igor Markevitch (Ukrainian: Игор Маркевич; July 27, 1912 – March 7, 1983) was a Ukrainian, Italian, and French composer and conductor.

Biography

Origin

Igor Markevich was born in Kiev, to an old family of Ukrainian Cossack starshyna ennobled in the 18th century. The family was descended from a Jewish merchant (converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in the 17th centuty), and eventually produced many notable individuals.

A son of the pianist Boris Markevitch and Zoya Pokitonov, Markevitch moved with his family to Paris in 1914 and Switzerland in 1916. Alfred Cortot discovered his musical ability and advised him to go to Paris in 1926 for training as a composer and pianist at the École Normale, where he studied under Cortot and Nadia Boulanger.

Career

Markevich gained recognition in 1929 when he was discovered by Serge Diaghilev, who commissioned a Piano Concerto from Markevitch and desired him to collaborate on a ballet with Boris Kochno. In a letter to the London Times Diaghilev hailed Markevitch as the man who would put an end to 'a scandalous period of music ... of cynical-sentimental simplicity'.^[1] The ballet project came to an end with Diaghilev's death on 19 August 1929, but Markevitch's works were accepted by the publisher Schott and he continued to produce at least one major work per year during the 1930s, being rated among the leading contemporary composers. He started being hailed as "the second Igor" — the first Igor being Igor Stravinsky.

Markevitch collaborated on a ballet, Rébus with Leonid Massine (1931) and another, L'envol d'Icare (1932) with Serge Lifar; neither was staged, though both scores were performed as concert works. L'envol d'Icare, based on the legend of the fall of Icarus, which Markevitch himself recorded in 1938 with the Belgian National Orchestra, was especially radical, introducing quarter-tones in both woodwind and strings.^[2] (In 1943 he recomposed the work under the title Icare, eliminating these, rescoring and simplifying the rhythms.) Béla Bartók once described Markevitch as "...the most striking personality in contemporary music..." and cited him as an influence on his own composing.^[3] An independent version of L'envol d'Icare for two pianos and percussion, which Bartók heard,^[4] is believed to have influenced Bartók's own Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion.

Markevitch continued composing as war approached but not long after completing his last original work, the Variations, Fugue and Envoi on a Theme of Handel for piano, in October 1941 he fell seriously ill. After recovering, he decided to give up composition and focus exclusively on conducting. His last compositional activities were the revision of L'envol d'Icare and arrangements of other composer's music, of which the version of The Musical Offering by J. S. Bach is especially notable.

Markevitch made his debut as a conductor at age 18 with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. As a conductor, he was well respected for his interpretations of the French and Russian repertory and of twentieth-century music. He settled in Italy . During the Second World War he was active with the partisan movement.In 1947 he married and settled in Switzerland.His musical career as a conductor brought him all over the world. He was permanent conductor of the Orchestre Lamoureux in Paris, and in 1965 he worked for the Spanish RTVE Orchestra.he was also the permanent conductor of the Monte Carlo orchestra.

In 1970, after ignoring his own compositions for nearly 30 years, he conducted often his own music and thereafter a slow revival of his original works began. He died suddenly from a heart attack in Antibes on March 7, 1983.

Family

His brother Dimitry Markevitch was a notable musicologist and cellist.

Markevitch's first wife was Kyra Nijinska, a daughter of the ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. They had one son, Vaslav, before divorcing.

His second wife was Donna Topazia Caetani, the only child of Don Michelangelo Caetani dei Duchi di Sermoneta and his wife, the former Cora Antinori, who ran the boutique of the Paris decorating firm Jansen. Their son is the conductor Oleg Caetani, who was chief conductor and artistic director of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Markevitch also had two daughters with Topazia, Allegra (born 1950) and Nathalie (born 1951).

At the end of his life, he became the companion of pianist Carlotta Garriga.

Work

Compositions

• Noces – suite for piano (1925)
• Sinfonietta in F major (1928-9)
• Piano Concerto (1929)
• Cantate for soprano, male chorus & orchestra (1929–30) (text by Jean Cocteau)
• Concerto Grosso (1930)
• Partita for piano and small orchestra (1930–31)
• Serenade for violin, clarinet and bassoon (1931)
• Rébus – ballet (1931)
• Cinéma-Ouverture (1931)
• Galop for 8 (or 9) players (1932)
• L'envol d'Icare – ballet (1932); recomposed as Icare (1943)
• Hymnes for orchestra (1932–33) (revised version 1980 with ad lib contralto and extra movement orchestrated from no. 3 of Trois poèmes of 1935)
• Petite suite d’apres Schumann for small orchestra (1933)
• Psaume for soprano and small orchestra (1933)
• Le paradis perdu, oratorio (1934–35) (text by Markevitch after John Milton)
• Trois poèmes for high voice and piano (1935) (texts by Cocteau, Plato, Goethe); No.3 orchestrated 1936 as Hymne à la mort, incorporated 1980 into Hymnes for orchestra
• Cantique d’amour for orchestra (1936)
• Le nouvel âge, sinfonia concertante for orchestra with 2 pianos (1937)
• La Taille de l’homme – 'concert inachevée' for soprano and 12 instruments (1938–39, unfinished, but Part I complete and performable)
• Stefan le poète – 'impressions d’enfance' pour piano (1939–40)
• Lorenzo il magnifico, sinfonia concertante for soprano and orchestra (1940) (texts by Lorenzo de Medici)
• Variations, Fugue et Envoi on a Theme of Handel for piano (1941)
• Le Bleu Danube, valse de concert on themes by Johann Strauss (1944)
• 6 Songs of Mussorgsky arranged for voice and orchestra (1945)
• The Musical Offering by JS Bach arranged for triple orchestra (1949–50)

Theory

• Historical, analytical and practical studies of Beethoven symphonies (Die Sinfonien von Ludwig van Beethoven: historische, analytische und praktische Studien; published by Edition Peters, Leipzig, 1982) - popular literature for conductors, although disputed.

Sources

• The New York Times
• Tempo 133/4 (September 1980) Igor Markevitch double issue.

References

1. ^ 'Igor Markevitch: A Chronology', Tempo 133/4, p. 10.
2. ^ 'Icare' by Clive Bennett in Tempo No. 133/134 (September 1980), p. 45.
3. ^ "Igor Markevitch Biography". Naxos Records. http://www.naxos.com/composerinfo/665.htm. Retrieved 2007-09-07. 
4. ^ Bennett, 1980, p. 4.

External links

• Igor Markevitch at Allmusic
• Igor Markevitch biography at Boosey & Hawkes
• Igor Markevitch biography
• František Sláma (musician) Archive. More on the history of the Czech Philharmonic between the 1940s and the 1980s: Conductors

Preceded by Jean Martinon

Principal Conductors, Orchestre Lamoureux 1957–1961

Succeeded by Jean-Baptiste Mari

Persondata
Name	Markevitch, Igor
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	July 27, 1912
Place of birth
Date of death	March 7, 1983
Place of death