Nikolai Peiko

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Nikolai Peiko was born in Moscow in 1916. He started to compose music in his childhood, and after graduating from a rail-road technical college he studied in the musical college and then in Moscow Conservatory. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1940 from the composition class of N. Myaskovsky. In 1942-1949 he worked taught there, and after 1959 and to his last days he was a professor of composition in the Moscow Gnessin’s Musical Institute (S. Gubaidulina was among his students). As a student he went to a folklore expedition in Yakutia which was reflected in one of his first successful works, a symphonic suite “From the Legends of Yakutia” (1940). During the Second World War he worked in a military hospital and composed several patriotic pieces, of which Dramatic Overture (1941) and the First Symphony (1944-1946) were highly appreciated by Myaskovsly and Schostakovich. Later Peiko often used the folkloric materials in his compositions, for example, in his Moldavian suite for orchestra (1950), seven pieces on folkloric themes (1951), Fantasy on Finnish themes (1953). He worked profoundly in the genre of “pure” symphony, composed music for theater plays. In the 1960 s he composed much in the genre of chamber music (a piano quintet, two string quartets, vocal music, etc). In 1968 he completed one of his major works, an oratorio “The Tsar Ivan’s Night”, which was later redone by the author into an opera. Among his main works: “The Tsar Ivan’s Night”, an opera after the wo

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