Nikolai Peiko

Nikolay Ivanovich Peyko or Peiko (Николай Иванович Пейко) (March 25, 1916 in Moscow – 1995 in Moscow) was a Russian composer and professor of composition.

Peyko studied composition at Moscow Conservatory under Nikolay Myaskovsky, graduating in 1940, then working in a military hospital during the Second World War and teaching at the Moscow Conservatory 1942-1949. After he had been working since 1941-1943 in Ufa at a military hospital, NIkolay worked partly with and was influenced by Dmitri Shostakovich. From 1959 till retirement Peyko was professor of composition at the Gnessin State Musical College where his students included Sofia Gubaidulina and Alexander Arutjunjan. NIkolay was considered as an important composition teacher and taught his students twelve-tone case. Nikolay's first successful works, a sympathetic suite "From the Legends of Yakuta" (1940). During World War 2 he worked in a military hospital and composed several patriotic pieces "Dramatic Overture" (1941), first symphony (1944-1946) were highly appreciated by Myaskovsly and Schostakovich. Some classical archives from Nikolay are Moldavian Suite for orchestra (1950), "The Tsar Ivan's Night", "Jeanne d'Arc", Ballada, for piano, Piano Sonata NO.1, Variations for piano, Sonatina for piano No.2, Bylina, for Piano, Piano Sonata NO.2, Concert Triptych for 2 pianos. Nikolay worked on a genre of "pure" sympathy composed music for theater plays composed chamber music. Nikolay was more of a traditional composer who performed Folk music to the soviets in his musical language. His music is known for a more harsh, distant sound with lots of expression. Another sense of his music is driving march-rhythms with good humor, also presented with the sound of bells. In 1964 he received the title as a Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR. Nikolay began working with 12-note methods in the 1960s. In 2012 he performed in the Irish-Russian chamber-music festival in Moscow. Nikolay has won many awards throughout his lifetime, including two Stalin prizes for his first symphony (1947) and his Moldavian Suit (1950–51). Unfortunately NIkolay is completely unknown in the west, but his first two CD's ever made covers his piano music and was the first time any piece of music by Peyko was recorded on a western label (though several Soviet recordings of his music have reappeared in the West, e.g. his setting of Gogol's "The Overcoat" on 1950s Monitor LPs, or more recently a violin & orchestra fantasia in Brilliant Classics "Tretiakov Edition" (a 2007 CD set of recordings of that violinist's, mostly radio broadcast, performances.))

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