Nikolai Myaskovsky

The composer of 27 Symphonies composed between 1908 and 1950, Nikolai Myaskovsky was a seminal figure in Russian music. Born in 1881, he initially intended to pursue a career as an officer in the Russian army, but after hearing performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony (No. 6) he was unable to suppress his long-term desire to become a professional musician. He enrolled at the St Petersburg Conservatory at the age of 25, studying composition with Anatoly Lyadov and forming a lifelong friendship with Sergei Prokofiev, who happened to be the youngest member of the class. At the outbreak of the First World War, Myaskovsky was mobilised to serve on the Austrian front, but was invalided out of the army after suffering shell-shock. He suffered further trauma in 1918 after learning that his father had been gunned down by the Bolsheviks, an experience that was poignantly chronicled in his powerful Symphony No. 6 (1922-3). From 1921 until his death in 1950, Myaskovsky taught composition at the Moscow Conservatory to many significant Soviet composers, including Aram Khachaturian, Kabalevsky, Shebalin and Boris Tchaikovsky. Despite his ambivalent relationship with the Soviet regime, he tried to accommodate his musical style to the country’s changing cultural environment, from the progressive outlook of the 1920s—manifested in the fiercely dissonant Symphony No. 10 from 1927—to the more conservative Stalinist era, which gave rise to later lyrical works such as the Symphony No. 21 (1940) and the haunting Cello Concerto (1944-5).