Reinhold Glière

Reinhold Glière’s parents were German and Polish, and he was born in Kyiv, 1875, where he later served as director of the Conservatoire (1914-20). But he made his name as one of the most admired and accessible composers in 20th-century Russia, writing music whose colourful scoring, sweeping melodies and sense of drama appealed to audiences (and, crucially, the political authorities) both before and after the Bolshevik Revolution. After studying in Moscow, he came of age with three impassioned symphonies, of which the Third, Ilya Muromets (1911), portrayed a legendary Slavic hero on an epic scale. Glière composed operas, cantatas, chamber music and songs. But after the Revolution, it was his brilliantly tuneful ballet The Red Poppy (1927) that made him a household name in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile his lyrical, expressive concertos for harp (1938), horn (1951) and wordless coloratura soprano (1943) won him a niche in western concert halls that endures, even decades after his death in Moscow in 1956.