Pyotr Petrovich Suvchinsky ( pl, Piotr Suwczyński, russian: Пётр Петро́вич Сувчи́нский), later known as Pierre Souvtchinsky (October 5, 1892,
St-Petersburg – January 24, 1985,
Paris), was a
Russian artistic patron and writer on music. The heir to a sugar fortune, he took piano lessons from
Felix Blumenfeld and initially hoped to become an operatic tenor. He was the patron and co-publisher of the
Saint Petersburg musical journal ''Muzikalniy sovremennik'' founded in 1915. He was a friend of
Nikolai Myaskovsky,
Sergei Prokofiev and
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...
, and was the real author of the book ''La poétique musicale'', published as by Stravinsky. (Prokofiev dedicated his
Piano Sonata No. 5 to Suvchinsky.) Suvchinsky emigrated from Russia in 1922 and lived in
Berlin and
Sofia, where he founded the Russian-Bulgarian Publishing House; then in
Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was still active in musical circles and a champion of the music of
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...
and
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music.
Born in Mont ...
in the post-war period; he was a co-founder, with Boulez and
Jean-Louis Barrault, of the
Domaine musical concert series.
References
*
Richard Taruskin, ''Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions'' (Oxford University Press, 1996), especially pp. 1120–1134.
*
Éric Humbertclaude (ed.),
Pierre Souvtchinski, cahiers d'étude' (Harmattan, 2006). .
1892 births
1985 deaths
Ukrainian writers
Eurasianism
Writers about music
Soviet emigrants to Germany
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