Sergei Taneyev

Composer and pianist Sergei Taneyev occupies a unique position in Russian music. Unlike most of his Russian contemporaries, his compositions owe little to the indigenous nationalist traditions that held sway at that time. Instead, he drew inspiration from the music of the Renaissance and German masters such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Beethoven. Although two remarkable cantatas—John of Damascus (1883-84) and At the Reading of a Psalm (1912-15)—bookend his compositional output, his most significant achievements were in purely instrumental forms. In this respect, Symphony No. 4 (1896-98) and the Concert Suite for Violin and Orchestra (1908-9), the latter notably championed by David Oistrakh, are especially impressive examples of his large-scale works. But he was also a superb composer of chamber music, the Piano Trio (1906-8) and Piano Quintet (1910-11) justifiably regarded as highpoints of the genre. Born in 1856, he was educated at the Moscow Conservatory, studying composition with Tchaikovsky and piano with Nikolai Rubinstein. Graduating with gold medals in both disciplines, he established a close friendship with Tchaikovsky, offering unusually frank assessments of his colleague’s work while at the same time appearing as soloist in the first performances of most of the older master’s works for piano and orchestra. Much admired as a teacher, his pupils included Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Lyapunov and Glière. He died in 1915.