Igor Markevitch

Ukrainian composer and conductor Igor Markevitch (Ihor Borysovych Markevych) was born in Kyiv on 27 July 1912 into a Cossack military family.  The family moved to Paris when he was two years old, and again to Switzerland in 1916.  In 1926 he was advised by Alfred Cortot to train in Paris, where, at the École Normale de Musique he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger and piano with Cortot.

In 1929 Serge Diaghilev commissioned a piano concerto from Markevitch and invited him to collaborate on a ballet. His music began to be published by Schott.

During the 1930s he was rated highly among leading contemporary composers, writing several ballet scores, but during World War II he became ill, and, after recovering, decided to give up writing music and to concentrate on conducting. (Later, in 1970, he began conducting his own works.)

After the war, he settled in Switzerland and became permanent conductor of the Paris-based Orchestre Lamoureux and the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra. He also appeared as conductor with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Radio Televisión Española in Madrid and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Igor Markevitch died suddenly from a heart attack in Antibes, France on 7 March 1983.

 

A selection of articles about Igor Markevitch

Resounding Echoes by Robert McCarney - Heaven and Hell

CD Spotlight. The Magic of Ballets Russes - Giuseppe Pennisi listens to Warner Classics' box set. '... a gem which should be on the shelves of all those interested in the music of the early decades of the twentieth century ...'