Eduard Nápravník

Eduard Nápravník
Eduard Francevič Nápravník (Russian: Эдуард Францевич Направник; 24 August 1839 – 10 November 1916) was a Czech conductor and composer. Nápravník settled in Russia and is best known for his leading role in Russian musical life as the principal conductor of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg for many decades. In that capacity, he conducted the premieres of many operas by Russian composers, including those by Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.
Biography
Nápravník was born in Býšť, Bohemia, in 1839. His studies of music were precariously uneven as a child, being the son of a poor teacher. Orphaned in 1853 at the age of 14, he first worked as a local church organist. In 1854 he entered the Prague Organ School, where he studied under Jan Bedřich Kittl and others, eventually becoming an assistant teacher as Kittl's generosity allowed him to continue his studies. In 1861, he worked in Russia for the first time as conductor of the private orchestra of Prince Yusupov in St. Petersburg.
Nápravník became organist and assistant conductor at the Imperial theatres in 1863, second conductor in 1867, and chief conductor, succeeding Liadov, in 1869, holding the post until his death. He led the first performances of Boris Godunov in 1874, conducted five operas by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, including The Maid of Orleans, Mazepa and The Queen of Spades, and five by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, including May Night, The Snow Maiden and Christmas Eve. He also conducted concerts of the Russian Musical Society. In 1914, after a productive career in the service of Russian opera, he was forced to retire due to ill health.
In November 1875, Nápravník conducted the first performance in Russia of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto with Gustav Kross as soloist (whose playing was described by the composer as "an atrocious cacophony"). Nápravník is also well known for leading the second — and overwhelmingly persuasive — performance of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique symphony on 6/18 November 1893, twelve days after the composer's death. The premiere, under the composer's baton, had not fared so well, partly due to the audience's and the orchestra's unfamiliarity with a work that contained so many novelties, compositionally speaking, and partly due to Tchaikovsky's conducting (although Rimsky protested after that second performance, in his autobiography Moy Muzikalny Zhizn [My Musical Life], that the first performance had also gone well under the baton of its creator). Under Nápravník's baton, however, and under the solemn influence of Tchaikovsky's sudden passing, the work was seen as a masterpiece with an overwhelming emotional message. It included some minor corrections that Tchaikovsky had made after the premiere, and was thus the first performance of the work in the exact form in which it is known today.
Of Nápravník's own four operas the most successful was Dubrovsky (1894, staged 1895) written to a Russian libretto by Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky after the story by Alexander Pushkin.
He died in Petrograd in 1916. In May 1917, his family went abroad and eventually settled in Belgium.
His wife was singer Olga Shryoder (ru: Ольга Эдуардовна Шрёдер).
Compositions
Operas
Nizhegorodtzy (The Nizhniy-Novgorodians, 1867, staged 1868)
Harold (1884, staged 1885)
Dubrovsky, libretto by Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1894, staged 1895)
Francesca da Rimini (after Stephen Phillips's play based on the fragment from Dante's Divine Comedy, 1902)]
Orchestral and choral
Ballads for voices and orchestra: The Voyevode, The Cossack, and Tamara (after Mikhail Lermontov)
Four symphonies: (1860–1879; No. 3 The Demon (after Lermontov's poem of the same name)
Suite for Orchestra
Solemn Overture
Marches and national dances for orchestra
Fantasy and suite for violin and orchestra
Concerto for piano and orchestra (Concerto symphonique) in A minor, Op. 27 (1877)
Fantasy on Russian themes (Fantaisie russe) for piano and orchestra in B minor, Op. 39 (1881)
Vlasta, overture on Slovak themes (1861)
The East [Восток], symphonic poem for orchestra (1881)
Chamber music
Three string quartets (1873–78)
String quintet (1897)
Two piano trios
Piano quartet
Violin and piano sonata
Two suites for cello and piano
String instrument and piano pieces
Incidental music
Don Juan, incidental music for Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's play (1892)
Selected discography
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 27 and Fantasie Russe in B minor, Op. 39. Yevgeny Soifertis, piano; BBC Scottish Orchestra conducted by Alexander Titov (Hyperion CDA67511).
Night Intermezzo (from opera "Dubrovsky" (Act IV); Melancholy, Op. 48 No. 3 [with music by Anatole Liadov] The USSR Symphony Orchestra, conductor Evgeni Svetlanov (Melodiya SUCD 10-00140, 1990)
Legacy
A school in the village of Býšť bears Nápravník's name today.
His son Vladimir published a book about his father's life: Eduard Frantsovich Napravnik i ego sovremenniki 1991, in Russian.
Quotations
"Mr. Napravnik is our well-known Russian orchestra conductor" (Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880), book 2, chapter 2).
References
External links
Short biography
1839 births
1916 deaths
19th-century classical composers
19th-century conductors (music)
20th-century classical composers
20th-century Russian conductors (music)
Russian male conductors (music)
20th-century Russian male musicians
Czech conductors (music)
Czech male classical composers
Czech opera composers
Czech Romantic composers
Male opera composers
Russian male classical composers
Russian opera composers
Russian Romantic composers
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky