Igor Konstantin Buketoff (29 May 1915 –7 September 2001) was an American conductor, arranger and teacher. He had a special affinity with Russian music and with Sergei Rachmaninoff in particular. He also strongly promoted British contemporary music, and new music in general.
Buketoff was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of a Russian Orthodox priest.[ citation needed ] He liked to refer to himself as "the last active conductor with pre-Revolutionary blood in his veins". [1] His father knew Sergei Rachmaninoff and had been asked by the composer to assemble the choir for the 1927 world premiere of his Three Russian Folk Songs , Op. 41, using the basso profundos among the Orthodox clergy. Igor attended the rehearsals for the premiere and was told by his father that the conductor, Leopold Stokowski, had his own ideas about the tempo for the final song and refused to obey Rachmaninoff's wishes. [2]
His education was at the University of Kansas 1931-32, the Juilliard School in New York 1935-41, and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. He taught at the Conservatory, and at Juilliard 1935-45. [3] He directed the choral departments at Juilliard and Adelphi College. [4]
At Juilliard he programmed Rachmaninoff's Three Russian Folk Songs, and remembering what had happened with the 1927 premiere, he consulted the composer about the tempo to be used in the final song. He also recorded the work commercially. In 1940 he contributed a scholarly article on Russian chant to Gustave Reese's Music in the Middle Ages. [2]
From 1941 to 1947 he was Music Director of the Chautauqua Opera Association [2] [3] and taught at Columbia University 1941-47. [3] In 1941 he won the first Ditson Conductor's Award. [4] In the early part of his career he conducted a range of orchestras in the United States, which included the New York Philharmonic in the Young People's Concerts 1948-53, [3] the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra 1948-66. [3] He taught at Butler University 1953-63 [3] and was later associated with the Festival of Neglected Romantic Music held there.
In 1959, Buketoff established the World Music Bank for International Exchange and Promotion of Contemporary Music, for which participating countries were asked to nominate outstanding scores. [4] [5] The organization is now called the International Contemporary Music Exchange [2] [6] and is managed by the International Rostrum of Composers. He won the Ditson Award again in 1967. [3] [4]
He was conductor of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra 1964-66 [3] and also conducted internationally. He was Director of the Contemporary Composers Project for the Institute of International Education 1967-70. [3]
In 1971, Buketoff conducted the world premiere of Lee Hoiby's opera Summer and Smoke with St Paul Opera, Minnesota. [7] With that organisation he also led the U.S. premieres of Carl Nielsen's Maskarade and Werner Egk's Betrothal in San Domingo. [1]
At Eugene Ormandy's request,[ citation needed ] he reconstructed Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture , setting the opening section for a cappella chorus, in the style of a Russian Orthodox chant, and the finale for chorus and orchestra. He recorded this version with the New Philharmonia Orchestra.
He taught at the University of Houston 1977-79 [3] and conducted the Texas Chamber Orchestra 1980-81.
At the request of Sophie Satin, Rachmaninoff's sister-in-law, [8] Igor Buketoff orchestrated Act I of Rachmaninoff's unfinished opera Monna Vanna , which was premiered in a concert performance at Saratoga Springs, New York, on 11 August 1984, with the Philadelphia Orchestra. [4] Rachmaninoff had written this act in piano score, as well as some uncompleted sketches for Act II. [9] [10] The soloists were Sherrill Milnes and Tatiana Troyanos. [1] Buketoff also recorded the work with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, again with Sherrill Milnes, but other singers sang the other roles.
He also produced a new version of Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov in which he removed most of Rimsky-Korsakov's additions and reorchestrations, and fleshed out some other parts of Mussorgsky's original orchestration. This version had its first performance at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1997, under Valery Gergiev. [2] [11]
He also prepared a version of Delius's opera A Village Romeo and Juliet , with reduced orchestration. [12]
The Los Angeles Conservatory awarded him an Honorary Doctorate. [3]
In his later years Igor Buketoff lived in Manhattan. He didn't follow the Eastern Orthodox tradition of his family; he was a lifetime member at St. James' Episcopal Church (New York City). He died in the Bronx on 7 September 2001, aged 86, [2] survived by his wife and a daughter. [2]
Buketoff was known for the unusual repertoire he chose to record. These (counting studio and radio recordings) included:
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is an internationally recognized solo pianist, chamber music performer, and conductor. He is originally from Russia and has held Icelandic citizenship since 1972. He has lived in Switzerland since 1978. Ashkenazy has collaborated with well-known orchestras and soloists. In addition, he has recorded a large repertoire of classical and romantic works. His recordings have earned him five Grammy awards and Iceland's Order of the Falcon.
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British conductor. One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his appearance in the Disney film Fantasia with that orchestra. He was especially noted for his free-hand conducting style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from the orchestras he directed.
Kirill Petrovich Kondrashin was a Soviet and Russian conductor. People's Artist of the USSR (1972).
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works. The musical ensembles with which he was associated included the Ballets Russes, the Huddersfield Choral Society, the Royal Choral Society, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and the London Philharmonic, Hallé, Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and Royal Philharmonic orchestras. Sargent was held in high esteem by choirs and instrumental soloists, but because of his high standards and a statement that he made in a 1936 interview disputing musicians' rights to tenure, his relationship with orchestral players was often uneasy. Despite this, he was co-founder of the London Philharmonic, was the first conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic as a full-time ensemble, and played an important part in saving the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from disbandment in the 1960s.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He is conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, and music director of the San Francisco Symphony.
Albert Coates was an English conductor and composer. Born in Saint Petersburg, where his English father was a successful businessman, he studied in Russia, England and Germany, before beginning his career as a conductor in a series of German opera houses. He was a success in England conducting Wagner at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1914, and in 1919 was appointed chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.
The Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff was written from October 1906 to April 1907. The premiere was performed at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg on 26 January 1908, with the composer conducting. Its duration is approximately 60 minutes when performed uncut; cut performances can be as short as 35 minutes. The score is dedicated to Sergei Taneyev, a Russian composer, teacher, theorist, author, and pupil of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The piece remains one of the composer's most popular and best known compositions.
The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) is an American orchestra based in the city of Rochester, New York. Its primary concert venue is the Eastman Theatre at the Eastman School of Music.
Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40, is a major work by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, completed in 1926. The work exists in three versions. Following its unsuccessful premiere, the composer made cuts and other amendments before publishing it in 1928. With continued lack of success, he withdrew the work, eventually revising and republishing it in 1941. The original manuscript version was released in 2000 by the Rachmaninoff Estate to be published and recorded. The work is dedicated to Nikolai Medtner, who in turn dedicated his Second Piano Concerto to Rachmaninoff the following year.
Issay Alexandrovich Dobrowen, born Itschok Zorachovitch Barabeitchik, was a Russian/Soviet-Norwegian pianist, composer and conductor. He left the Soviet Union in 1922 and became a Norwegian citizen in 1929.
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens was an English conductor and composer.
Mark Andrew James is a conductor of classical music.
Monna Vanna is an unfinished opera by Sergei Rachmaninoff after a play by Maurice Maeterlinck. Rachmaninoff had completed Act I in short vocal score, with piano accompaniment, and then he went to ask for permission to set the text in a full three-act treatment. However, another composer, Henry Février, had by then received the rights to an operatic setting of the text. Had Rachmaninoff proceeded to a complete operatic setting, such a work could not have been produced in European countries that were signatories to copyright laws that covered the work of Maeterlinck. This opera could only have been produced in countries that at the time were not signatories to European copyright law, such as Russia. Ultimately, Rachmaninoff abandoned further work on this opera and never wrote a complete setting.
This is the discography of Simon Rattle and other produced works by the English conductor.
Massimo Filippo Antongiulio Maria Freccia was an Italian American conductor. He had an international reputation but never held a post as music director of a major orchestra or opera house. Unusually for an Italian, he built his career around symphonic music rather than opera. For several years he was an assistant to Arturo Toscanini, whom he venerated, and he was regularly invited by Toscanini to conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
Anthony Bernard was an English conductor, organist, pianist and composer.
The Three Russian Songs, Op. 41 for chorus and orchestra were written by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1926. It is the last of Rachmaninoff's three works for chorus and orchestra, the others being the cantata Spring, Op. 20 (1902), and the choral symphony The Bells, Op. 35 (1913). The work takes about 15 minutes to perform.
William David Black was an American pianist and teacher.
The conductor Malcolm Sargent's career as a recording artist began in the days of acoustic recording, shortly before the introduction of the microphone and electrical recording, and continued into the stereo LP era. He recorded prolifically from 1924 until 1967, the year of his death.
Ward Stare is an American conductor. Stare was the Music Director of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra from 2014 until 2021 and was also the Resident Conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra from 2008 to 2012. Stare is currently active as a guest conductor both domestically within the United States as well as internationally. In addition Stare currently holds a position as a Distinguished Artist at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.