Yakov Kreizberg

Yakov Kreizberg (Russian: Яков Крейцберг; born Yakov Mayevich Bychkov, 24 October 1959 – 15 March 2011) was a Russian-born American conductor.

Yakov Bychkov was born in Leningrad into a family of Jewish ancestry. His father, May Bychkov, was a doctor and military scientist. His maternal great-grandfather, coincidentally named Yakov Kreizberg, was a conductor at the Odessa Opera. His brother is Semyon Bychkov (born in 1952).

Yakov Bychkov began studying piano at age 5. He attended the Glinka Choir School, where he began composing at age 13. He subsequently studied conducting with Ilya Musin, as did his brother. In later years, Kreizberg summarised his conducting education as follows:

"What Musin taught was a foundation; everything else I learned from master classes of very good and bad conductors. From the bad, I learned what not to do."

Semyon Bychkov had emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1975. Yakov Bychkov had also hoped to emigrate, but his father's professional status and perceived security risk were barriers to emigration. His emigration only became possible when his father chose to divorce his mother, to allow for mother and son to leave the country. By that time, he had composed numerous works, all unpublished, in manuscript. The Soviet authorities, however, did not allow any handwritten material to be taken out of the country, so he had to leave his compositions behind. The experience was such that he gave up composition and decided to become a conductor, although he also stated later that he "realised I didn't have enough talent for it".

Following his emigration to the United States with his mother in 1976, Yakov Bychkov attended the Mannes School of Music, as did his brother, who counted among his conducting teachers, and graduated in 1981. One of his first public appearances as conductor was on 30 March 1980 at the Marble Collegiate Church, leading Haydn's Symphony No. 88. For his graduation concert, he conducted the Mannes Orchestra on 6 March 1981. Around this time, he changed his surname to his mother’s maiden name, Kreizberg, to distinguish himself from his older brother.

On the advice of Seiji Ozawa, Kreizberg moved to the University of Michigan to do his graduate studies in conducting, where his teachers included Gustav Meier. He took US citizenship in 1982. He became the first student there to earn a doctorate in both orchestral and operatic conducting, and won the school's Eugene Ormandy Prize. While there, he met a student named Amy Anderson, and they were married in New York City on 24 April 1988.

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