Serge Koussevitzky — conductor with roots in the Russian Empire
Sergey Aleksandrovich Koussevitzky was born on 26 July 1874 in Vyshny Volochyok, in the Tver Governorate of the Russian Empire, about 250 kilometres north-west of Moscow, into a poor Jewish family of professional musicians. He moved to Moscow as a teenager and accepted Christian baptism, without which a career there was closed to him.
In 1888 he won a scholarship to study the double bass at the Moscow Philharmonic Society's school, and in 1894 joined the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre. Over the following years he became one of the great virtuosos of the instrument, touring as a soloist from 1896 and writing a concerto for it. In 1905 he married Natalie Ushkova, the daughter of a wealthy tea merchant, and studied conducting in Berlin with Arthur Nikisch. Returning to Russia, he founded his own orchestra in Moscow and in 1909 the publishing house Éditions Russes de Musique, which published Scriabin, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, among others.
After the Revolution he conducted the State Orchestra in Petrograd from 1917 to 1920. In 1920 he left Soviet Russia for Berlin and Paris, where his Concerts Koussevitzky presented new works by Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Ravel; in 1922 he commissioned Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, first performed on 19 October that year.
In 1924 he succeeded Pierre Monteux as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1949. He championed American composers, among them Aaron Copland, Roy Harris and Samuel Barber, and for the orchestra's fiftieth anniversary in 1930 commissioned works including Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, Prokofiev's Fourth Symphony and Ravel's Piano Concerto in G. In 1936 the Boston Symphony took over the Berkshire summer festival, and in 1940 he opened the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, where Leonard Bernstein was among his conducting students. He and Natalie became American citizens in 1941.
After Natalie's death in 1942 he set up the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in her memory; its commissions include Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, Britten's Peter Grimes and Copland's Third Symphony. He died in Boston on 4 June 1951, aged seventy-six, and is buried beside Natalie in Lenox, Massachusetts.
"Conducted the State Orchestra in Petrograd after 1917; left Soviet Russia in 1920 for Berlin and Paris, where he organised the Concerts Koussevitzky; moved to Boston in 1924 and became a US citizen in 1941."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Vyshny Volochyok, Tver Governorate (Russia)
Born in 1874 into a Jewish family of professional musicians in Vyshny Volochyok, he became a double-bass virtuoso in the Bolshoi orchestra, founded his own orchestra and the publishing house Éditions Russes de Musique in Moscow, and left Soviet Russia in 1920.
.svg?width=900)
Vyshny Volochyok, Tver Governorate (Russia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.