1.
Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv Oblast
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Pervomaisk is a city in Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukraine and the administrative center of the Pervomaisk Raion. Administratively, the city is incorporated as a city of oblast significance and it is located on the Southern Bug river which bisects the city. Population,66, 733 In 2001, population was 70,170, the name derives from the Russian pervomaj meaning the first of May, referring also to the citys formation on 1 May 1919 from the merger of three neighbouring places. The name for one of the towns, Bohopil, was derived from the name of a local river Southern Bug which in Polish is named Boh. The city was formed when three neighbouring settlements, the village of Holta and the town of Bohopil around a county city of Olviopol were merged, the merger was adopted by the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee on June 6,1919. These cities existed from 1773 and the first settlement in the area was mentioned as early as 1676, in the 17th century Holta was part of Zaporizhian Sich, Bohopil was the customs point of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Olviopol was part of the Russian Empire. Holta served as the center of the Golta judeţ of Transnistria, Pervomaisk had been more than 1/3 Jewish before the war but most were murdered during the occupation. In Pervomaisk, there is at 48°40N 30°5129E a 196 metres tall guyed TV mast, Pervomaisk was the former location of the 46th Rocket Division of the 43rd Rocket Army of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces, formed during the Cold War. One of the commanders of the division, appointed in 1991, was General Major Mikhail Filatov, the RT-23UTTKh intercontinental ballistic missile silos based at Pervomaisk were destroyed, partially with Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programme funding, during the 1990s. Lysa Hora Official website of Pervomaisk
2.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
3.
Ukraine
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Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
4.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
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Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian pianist, composer, and conductor of the late-Romantic period, some of whose works are among the most popular in the classical repertoire. Born into a family, Rachmaninoff took up the piano at age four. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1892 and had composed several piano, in 1897, following the critical reaction to his Symphony No. 1, Rachmaninoff entered a depression and composed little until successful therapy allowed him to complete his enthusiastically received Piano Concerto No.2 in 1901. After the Russian Revolution, Rachmaninoff and his family left Russia and resided in the United States, in 1942, Rachmaninoff moved to Beverly Hills, California. One month before his death from advanced melanoma, Rachmaninoff acquired American citizenship, the piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoffs compositional output, and through his own skills as a performer he explored the expressive possibilities of the instrument. Rachmaninoff was born at an estate in the Novgorod province in north-western Russia. It is unclear if he was born in the estate of Oneg, near Veliky Novgorod, or Semyonovo, near Staraya Russa, the Rachmaninoffs had strong musical and military leanings. The composers grandfather on the line, Arkady Alexandrovich, was a musician. His father, Vasily Arkadyevich Rachmaninoff, was an army officer and he married Lyubov Petrovna Butakova, the daughter of a wealthy army general who gave her five estates as part of her dowry. The couple had three sons and three daughters, Rachmaninoff being their fourth child, Rachmaninoff began piano and music lessons organised by his mother at the age of four. She became impressed with her sons musical ability to recite passages from memory without playing a wrong note. Rachmaninoff later dedicated Spring Waters, Song No.32 to Ornatskaya, in 1882, Rachmaninoffs father had to auction off their Oneg estate due to his financial incompetence—the familys five estates had been reduced to one. Rachmaninoff described his father as a wastrel, a gambler, a pathological liar. The family moved to a flat in Saint Petersburg. When Rachmaninoffs course of lessons with Ornatskaya neared its end, she arranged for him to music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. That year, his sister Sofia died of diphtheria and his left the family, with their approval. In 1885, Rachmaninoffs sister Yelena died of pernicious anemia at eighteen and she was an important musical influence to Rachmaninoff who introduced him to the works of Tchaikovsky
5.
Mikhail Nesterov
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Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov was a Russian and Soviet painter, associated with the Peredvizhniki and Mir Iskusstva. He was one of the first exponents of Symbolist art in Russia and he was born to a strongly patriarchal merchant family. His father was a draper and haberdasher, but always had a strong interest in history, in 1879, he began to participate in the schools exhibitions. Two years later, he entered the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts and he was disappointed at the teaching there and returned to Moscow, only to find Perov on his deathbed, so he took lessons from Alexei Savrasov. After a brief stay in Ufa, where he met his wife, Maria, he returned to Moscow. While creating a series of paintings, he supported himself doing illustrations for magazines and books published by Alexei Stupin. In 1885, he was awarded the title Free Artist and married, the following year, his wife died after giving birth to his daughter, Olga. Several of his works from this period feature his wifes image and his first major success came with his painting, The Hermit which was shown at the seventeenth exhibition of the Peredvizhniki in 1889. It was purchased by Pavel Tretyakov and the money enabled Nesterov to take a trip to Austria, Germany, France. This series would include fifteen large canvases and occupy him for fifty years. In 1890, Adrian Prakhov, who was overseeing work at St Volodymyrs Cathedral, became familiar with Nesterovs paintings and invited him to participate in creating murals, after some hesitation, he agreed, then travelled to Rome and Istanbul to acquaint himself with Byzantine art. This project would take years to complete. Despite this, he undertook other religious commissions, in 1898, Grand Duke George Alexandrovich asked him to work at the Alexander Nevsky church in Abastumani. He spent six years there, off and on, creating 50 small murals and the iconostasis and he was apparently much more pleased with later work at the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. He refused to work on the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw, in 1901, he wanted to deepen his spiritual appreciation of the monastic life, so he spent some time at the Solovetsky Monastery on the coast of the White Sea. He painted numerous works there and the influence of his visit could be seen in his canvases for many years after and he was also inspired by the novels of Pavel Ivanovich Melnikov, dealing with the lives of the Old Believers in the Volga Region. In 1902, he married Ekaterina Vasilyeva, whom he had met admiring his works at an exhibition, in 1905, after the Revolution began, he joined the Union of the Russian People, an extreme right-wing nationalist party that supported the Tsar. As a result, he was in danger after the October Revolution
6.
Tretyakov Gallery
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The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world. In 1892, Tretyakov presented his famous collection of approximately 2,000 works to the Russian nation. The façade of the building was designed by the painter Viktor Vasnetsov in a peculiar Russian fairy-tale style. It was built in 1902–04 to the south from the Moscow Kremlin, during the 20th century, the gallery expanded to several neighboring buildings, including the 17th-century church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi. In 1977 the Gallery kept a significant part of the George Costakis collection, Pavel Tretyakov started collecting art in the middle of 1850. The founding year of the Tretyakov Gallery is considered to be 1856, schilder and Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers by V. G. Kudyakov, although earlier, in 1854-1855, he had bought 11 graphic sheets and 9 pictures of old Dutch masters, in 1867 the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov was opened. The Gallery’s collection consisted of 1,276 paintings,471 sculptures and 10 drawings of Russian artists, in August 1892 Tretyakov presented his art gallery to the city of Moscow as a gift. In the collection at time, there were 1,287 paintings and 518 graphic works of the Russian school,75 paintings and 8 drawings of European schools,15 sculptures. The official opening of the called the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel. The gallery was located in a mansion that the Tretykov family had purchased in 1851. As the Tretyakov collection of art grew, the part of the mansion filled with art and it became necessary to make additions to the mansion in order to store. Additions were made in 1873,1882,1885,1892 and 1902-1904, construction of the façade was managed by the architect A. M. In early 1913, the Moscow City Duma elected Igor Grabar as a trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery, on June 3,1918, the Tretyakov Gallery was declared owned by Russian Federated Soviet Republic and was named the State Tretyakov Gallery. Igor Grabar was again appointed director of the museum, with Grabar’s active participation in the same year, the State Museum Fund was created, which up until 1927 remained one of the most important sources of replenishment of the gallerys collection. In 1926 architect and academician A. V, shchusev became the director of the gallery. In the following year the gallery acquired the house on Maly Tolmachevsky Lane. After restructuring in 1928, it housed the administration, academic departments, library, manuscripts department
7.
YouTube
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YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005, Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, YouTube now operates as one of Googles subsidiaries. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos deemed potentially offensive are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old, YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. YouTube began as a venture capital-funded technology startup, primarily from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006, YouTubes early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name www. youtube. com was activated on February 14,2005, the first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23,2005, and can still be viewed on the site, YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005. The first video to reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November 2005. Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. The site has 800 million unique users a month and it is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. The choice of the name www. youtube. com led to problems for a similarly named website, the sites owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www. utubeonline. com, in October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13,2006. In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, according to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event. On March 31,2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface, Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented, We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter. In May 2010, YouTube videos were watched more than two times per day. This increased to three billion in May 2011, and four billion in January 2012, in February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube was watched every day
8.
Kiev
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Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population in July 2015 was 2,887,974, Kiev is an important industrial, scientific, educational, and cultural centre of Eastern Europe. It is home to many industries, higher education institutions. The city has an infrastructure and highly developed system of public transport. The citys name is said to derive from the name of Kyi, during its history, Kiev, one of the oldest cities in Eastern Europe, passed through several stages of great prominence and relative obscurity. The city probably existed as a centre as early as the 5th century. A Slavic settlement on the trade route between Scandinavia and Constantinople, Kiev was a tributary of the Khazars, until seized by the Varangians in the mid-9th century. Under Varangian rule, the city became a capital of the Kievan Rus, completely destroyed during the Mongol invasion in 1240, the city lost most of its influence for the centuries to come. It was a capital of marginal importance in the outskirts of the territories controlled by its powerful neighbours, first the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, followed by Poland. The city prospered again during the Russian Empires Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, in 1917, after the Ukrainian National Republic declared independence from the Russian Empire, Kiev became its capital. From 1919 Kiev was an important center of the Armed Forces of South Russia and was controlled by the White Army. From 1921 onwards Kiev was a city of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was proclaimed by the Red Army, during World War II, the city again suffered significant damage, but quickly recovered in the post-war years, remaining the third largest city of the Soviet Union. During the countrys transformation to an economy and electoral democracy. Kievs armament-dependent industrial output fell after the Soviet collapse, adversely affecting science, Kiev emerged as the most pro-Western region of Ukraine where parties advocating tighter integration with the European Union dominate during elections. As a prominent city with a history, its English name was subject to gradual evolution. The early English spelling was derived from Old East Slavic form Kyjev, the name is associated with that of Kyi, the legendary eponymous founder of the city. Early English sources use various names, including Kiou, Kiow, Kiew, on one of the oldest English maps of the region, Russiae, Moscoviae et Tartariae published by Ortelius the name of the city is spelled Kiou. On the 1650 map by Guillaume de Beauplan, the name of the city is Kiiow, in the book Travels, by Joseph Marshall, the city is referred to as Kiovia
9.
Odessa
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Odessa or Odesa is the third most populous city of Ukraine and a major seaport and transportation hub located on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. Odessa is also a center of the Odessa Oblast and a multiethnic cultural center. Odessa is sometimes called the pearl of the Black Sea, the South Capital, the predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement, was founded by Hacı I Giray, the Khan of Crimea, in 1440 and originally named after him as Hacıbey. After a period of Lithuanian control, it passed into the domain of the Ottoman Sultan in 1529, in 1794, the city of Odessa was founded by a decree of the Empress Catherine the Great. From 1819 to 1858, Odessa was a free port, during the Soviet period it was the most important port of trade in the Soviet Union and a Soviet naval base. On 1 January 2000, the Quarantine Pier at Odessa Commercial Sea Port was declared a free port, during the 19th century, it was the fourth largest city of Imperial Russia, after Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Warsaw. Its historical architecture has a style more Mediterranean than Russian, having heavily influenced by French. Some buildings are built in a mixture of different styles, including Art Nouveau, Renaissance, the city of Odessa hosts both the Port of Odessa and Port Yuzhne, a significant oil terminal situated in the citys suburbs. Another notable port, Chornomorsk, is located in the same oblast, together they represent a major transport hub integrating with railways. Odessas oil and chemical processing facilities are connected to Russian and European networks by strategic pipelines, the city was named in compliance with the Greek Plan of Catherine the Great. It was named after the ancient Greek city of Odessos, which was believed to have been located here. Although Odessa is located in between the ancient Greek cities of Tyras and Olbia, Odessos is believed to be the predecessor of the present day city of Varna, Catherines secretary of state Adrian Gribovsky claimed in his memoirs that the name was his suggestion. Some expressed doubts about this claim, while others noted the reputation of Gribovsky as an honest and modest man, Odessa was the site of a large Greek settlement not later than the middle of the 6th century BC. Some scholars believe it to be a settlement established by Histria. Whether the Bay of Odessa is the ancient Port of the Histrians cannot yet be considered a settled question based on the available evidence, archaeological artifacts confirm extensive links between the Odessa area and the eastern Mediterranean. In the Middle Ages successive rulers of the Odessa region included various nomadic tribes, the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Yedisan Crimean Tatars traded there in the 14th century. During the reign of Khan Hacı I Giray of Crimea, the Khanate was endangered by the Golden Horde and the Ottoman Turks and, in search of allies, the site of present-day Odessa was then a fortress known as Khadjibey. It was part of the Dykra region, however, most of the rest of the area remained largely uninhabited in this period
10.
Harmony
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In music, harmony considers the process by which the composition of individual sounds, or superpositions of sounds, is analysed by hearing. Usually, this means simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches, or chords, the study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic line. In popular and jazz harmony, chords are named by their root plus various terms, in many types of music, notably baroque, romantic, modern, and jazz, chords are often augmented with tensions. A tension is an additional member that creates a relatively dissonant interval in relation to the bass. Typically, in the common practice period a dissonant chord resolves to a consonant chord. Harmonization usually sounds pleasant to the ear when there is a balance between the consonant and dissonant sounds, in simple words, that occurs when there is a balance between tense and relaxed moments. The term harmony derives from the Greek ἁρμονία, meaning joint, agreement, concord, from the verb ἁρμόζω, to fit together, the term was often used for the whole field of music, while music referred to the arts in general. In Ancient Greece, the term defined the combination of contrasted elements, in the Middle Ages the term was used to describe two pitches sounding in combination, and in the Renaissance the concept was expanded to denote three pitches sounding together. Aristoxenus wrote a work entitled Harmonika Stoicheia, which is thought the first work in European history written on the subject of harmony, the underlying principle behind these texts is that harmony sanctions harmoniousness by conforming to certain pre-established compositional principles. Current dictionary definitions, while attempting to give concise descriptions, often highlight the ambiguity of the term in modern use, ambiguities tend to arise from either aesthetic considerations or from the point of view of musical texture (distinguishing between harmonic and contrapuntal. The view that modern tonal harmony in Western music began in about 1600 is commonplace in music theory and this is usually accounted for by the replacement of horizontal writing, common in the music of the Renaissance, with a new emphasis on the vertical element of composed music. Modern theorists, however, tend to see this as an unsatisfactory generalisation, as Carl Dahlhaus puts it, It was not that counterpoint was supplanted by harmony but that an older type both of counterpoint and of vertical technique was succeeded by a newer type. And harmony comprises not only the structure of chords but also their movement, like music as a whole, harmony is a process. Descriptions and definitions of harmony and harmonic practice may show bias towards European musical traditions, pitch simultaneity in particular is rarely a major consideration. Nevertheless, emphasis on the precomposed in European art music and the written theory surrounding it shows considerable cultural bias, the conception of musics that live in oral traditions as something composed with the use of improvisatory techniques separates them from the higher-standing works that use notation. Yet the evolution of harmonic practice and language itself, in Western art music, is and was facilitated by this process of prior composition, some traditions of Western music performance, composition, and theory have specific rules of harmony. This model provides that the seventh and ninth are not dissonant
11.
Emil Gilels
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Emil Grigoryevich Gilels was a Soviet pianist, widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. Gilels was born on 19 October 1916 in Odessa, Russian Empire and his father worked as a clerk in a sugar refinery. His sister Elizaveta, born 3 years later, subsequently became a renowned violinist, Gilels had perfect pitch, and at age of five and a half, he began lessons with Yakov Tkach, a famous piano pedagogue in Odessa. A quick learner, he was playing all three volumes of Loeschhorns studies within a few months, and soon afterwards Clementi and Mozart sonatinas, Gilels later credited this strict training with Tkach for establishing the foundation of his technique. In May 1929, aged 12, Gilels gave his first public concert, in 1929, Gilels was accepted to the Odessa Conservatory into the class of Bertha Reingbald. Under the tutelage of Reingbald, Gilels broadened his range of interests, with a particular aptitude for history. In 1932, Arthur Rubinstein visited the Odessa Conservatory and met Gilels, like Tkach, Reingbald carefully guided Gilels in terms of allowing him to give live concerts, and protected her student from excessive concert performances. He competed in the All-Ukrainian Competition, despite being below the age limit to participate, in 1932, Gilels first visited Heinrich Neuhaus. In 1933, Gilels participated in the First All-Union Competition of Performers in Moscow and this win made Gilels famous throughout the USSR, and led to a nationwide concert tour. However, the stresses of touring led Gilels to curtail his touring and to return to Odessa, to conclude his studies, Gilels subsequently regarded Reingbald as his true teacher, mentor and lifelong friend. Gilels graduated from the Odessa Conservatory in the autumn of 1935, subsequently, he was accepted into the class of Heinrich Neuhaus as a postgraduate student at the Moscow Conservatory, and Gilels renewed his commitment to giving concerts. In 1936, he participated in his first international competition, the International Vienna Music Academy Competition, Gilels took the second place award, while his friend and fellow student Yakov Flier was the first prize winner. Two years later, in 1938, both Gilels and Filer participated in the Ysaÿe International Festival in Brussels, Gilels was awarded first prize, and Flier took third prize. Gilels completed his studies in Moscow in 1938, following his triumph at Brussels, a scheduled tour and American debut at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair was aborted because of the outbreak of the Second World War. Sergei Rachmaninoff, living in exile from Russia, had heard of the reputation of Gilels, Rachmaninoff subsequently regarded Gilels as his pianistic successor, and sent him his medal and diploma. Gilels treasured these relics all his life, in 1944, Gilels premiered Prokofievs 8th Piano Sonata. During World War II, Gilels entertained Soviet troops with morale-boosting open-air recitals on the frontline, in 1945, he formed a chamber music trio with the violinist Leonid Kogan and the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Gilels was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1946, after the war, he toured the Soviet Bloc countries of Eastern Europe as a soloist
12.
David Oistrakh
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David Fyodorovich Oistrakh was a renowned Soviet classical violinist and violist. He is considered one of the preeminent violinists of the 20th century and he was born in the cosmopolitan city of Odessa in the Russian Empire into a Jewish family. His father was David Kolker and his mother was Isabella Beyle, at the age of five, young Oistrakh began his studies of violin and viola as a pupil of Pyotr Stolyarsky. In 1914, at the age of six, Oistrakh performed his debut concert and he entered the Odessa Conservatory in 1923, where he studied until his graduation in 1926. In the Conservatory he also studied harmony with composer Mykola Vilinsky and his 1926 graduation concert consisted of Bachs Chaconne, Tartinis Devils Trill Sonata, Rubinsteins Viola Sonata, and Prokofievs Violin Concerto No.1 in D major. In 1927, Oistrakh relocated to Moscow, where he gave his first recital and met his future wife and they were married a year later, and had one child, Igor Oistrakh, who was born in 1931. In at least one of the recordings of Mozarts Sinfonia Concertante, Igor Oistrakh played violin, from 1934 onwards, David Oistrakh held a position teaching at the Moscow Conservatory, and was later made professor in 1939. Some of his colleagues while teaching at the Moscow Conservatory included Yuri Yankelevich, Oistrakh taught Oleg Kagan, Emmy Verhey, Gidon Kremer, Yulia Brodskaya, Zoya Petrosyan, Victor Danchenko, Cyrus Forough, Olga Parhomenko, and his son Igor Oistrakh. In 1950s, David Oistrah invited Yulia Brodskaya to be his assistant in teaching solo and chamber music, from 1940 to 1963, Oistrakh performed extensively in a trio that also included the cellist Sviatoslav Knushevitsky and the pianist Lev Oborin. It was sometimes called the Oistrakh Trio, Oistrakh collaborated extensively with Oborin, as well as Jacques Thibaud, a French violinist. During World War II, he was active in the Soviet Union, premiering new concerti by Nikolai Miaskovsky and he was also awarded the Stalin Prize in 1942. Oistrakhs career was set from this point, although the Soviet Union was protective of its people, however, other sources indicate that Oistrakh performed in Leningrad that winter. Whether Oistrakh performed in Stalingrad is unconfirmed, Oistrakh was allowed to travel after the end of the war. He traveled to the countries in the Soviet bloc and even to the West and his first foreign engagement was to appear at the newly founded Prague Spring Festival where he was met with enormous success. In 1949 he gave his first concert in the West – in Helsinki, by 1959, he was beginning to establish a second career as a conductor, and in 1960 he was awarded the coveted Lenin Prize. His Moscow conducting debut followed in 1962, and by 1967 he had established a partnership with the celebrated Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter, Oistrakh was now seen as one of the great violinists of his time, among such luminaries as Romanias George Enescu and Lithuanian-born Jascha Heifetz. Oistrakh suffered an attack as early as 1964. He survived and continued to work at a furious pace and he had already become one of the principal cultural ambassadors for the Soviet Union to the West in live concerts and recordings
