Viktor Kosenko

Viktor Stepanovych Kosenko ( uk, Віктор Степанович Косенко; – 3 October 1938) was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, and educator. He was regarded by his contemporaries as a master of lyricism. His first compositions were markedly influenced by the works of composers such as Alexander Scriabin, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and his compatriot Mykola Lysenko.

Kosenko's life is conclusively divided into three distinct phases, in Warsaw, where he studied with renowned teachers Mikhail Sokolovsky and Iryna Miklashovskaya, in Zhytomyr, where he began teaching piano and music theory at the Music Technicum, later becoming director of the Zhytomyr Music School, and finally in Kyiv, where he devoted more time to symphonic compositions such as his ''Heroic Overture'', which brought him due recognition in the world of Soviet music. He was a leading figure among the broad-minded artistic collective of 20th-century Soviet music.

Kosenko's music combines a post-romantic idiom with intonations of Slavic folk songs and Western-European influences. His vocal, chamber and symphonic works are among the most important pieces of that time in USSR. He composed over 100 compositions for piano among waltzes, preludes, nocturnes, sonatas and mazurkas, in a total of about 250 musical works such as his symphonic ''Moldavian poem'', violin and piano concertos, trios and string quartets during his short musical career. His vocal compositions include a large number of ballads, choral and folk arrangements as well.

Life and career

Early life and education

Kosenko was born on 23 November 1896 in Saint Petersburg, into the large family of a major general named Stepan Kosenko. His family moved from Saint Petersburg to Warsaw in 1898, where later he would encounter the best of world musical classics while listening to the performance of musicians such as Fritz Kreisler, Ferruccio Busoni, and Pablo Casals. His mother Leopolda played the piano, sang and composed as well. Like this the young Kosenko grew up in an environment filled with musical compositions such as those by Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Ukrainian and Russian folk songs.

When Kosenko was about five or six, he began to pick out familiar melodies on the piano, as he had absolute pitch and a good musical memory. He would attempt to improvise, showing signs of his musical potential early on. At the age of nine, he was able to play Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata from memory, as he heard his older sister Maria practicing this piece. It was she who then gave Kosenko his first lessons at the piano. But his formal training in music began in 1905 with private piano lessons from professor Yudytskiy, with whom he studied for two years. From 1908, his abilities continued to develop under the guidance of Aleksander Michałowski, then professor at the Warsaw Conservatory.

In the summer of 1914, Kosenko was preparing to enter the Warsaw Conservatory to study piano. However, with the beginning of World War I, the family was forced to leave Poland. In 1915, he was admitted to the upper-division piano class at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he amazed the committee members by his sight-reading abilities just by looking over the score, putting it aside, and playing from memory, as well as a natural aptitude for musical transposition. Over the years, he continued studying composition and music theory under Mikhail Sokolovsky,Sokolovsky was himself a pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. piano with Iryna Miklashovskaya, and playing as concertmaster at the Mariinsky Theatre.Russian composer Alexander Glazunov, director of the conservatory at the time Kosenko was a student, freed him from paying tuition fees after finding out that he was working as accompanist at the Mariinsky Theater for financial reasons. During this time, he received positive evaluations from Alexander Glazunov, director of the institution, who wrote that Kosenko had "great pianistic and compositional abilities, and perfect pitch."Original Russian translated text: "Прекрасные пианистические и композиторские способности, абсолютный слух." Professor Miklashovskaya also gave a good feedback, saying that he was a "talented musician, very modest and well-behaved."Original Russian translated text: "талантливый музыкант, очень скромний и хорошо воспитанный." During his studies, Kosenko wrote poems, preludes, and mazurkas for piano. His music is characterized with stylistic musical characteristics of Romantic and post-romantic directions, which features a combination of the European tradition with a national Ukrainian element.

Zhytomyr

After graduating from the conservatory in 1918 Kosenko joined his family in Zhytomyr, at that time the cultural center of the Volyn province. The following year he began teaching piano classes and music theory at the Music Technicum,The Music Technicum is a musical institution that would be named after him from 1938. later becoming director of the Zhytomyr Music School. In February 1920, Kosenko married Angelina Kanepp.Angelina was older than Kosenko and already had two children, named Raisa and Iryna, from her first marriage. His love and deep admiration for her was such that he used to write to her almost every day and was disappointed if for any reason she could not reply to him as fast as he wished. The pieces created between 1919 and 1924 convey deep lyrical feelings, hence the reason he dedicated almost all of his output to her.

In September 1922, Kosenko gave his first concert, attended by his family and close friends, traveling to Moscow the following year to meet with composers and musicians. By this time he was allowed by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians to have his first piano compositions published.

This period that Kosenko spend in Zhytomyr was one of the richest in his musical career for he perfected his own artistic style in instrumental, vocal and chamber music; genres in which he was very active at that time. There, he authored a large number of piano pieces, over twenty romances, violin and cello sonatas, works for children, and music for plays. He was also heavily involved in a myriad of musical activities such as the creation of a music society, concert appearances, the organization of his piano chamber trio, vocal quartets and even a symphony orchestra, besides serving as accompanist player for different ensembles in the musical life of the city.

Compositional debut

In 1921, Kosenko and his fellow musicians founded the '' Leontovych Musical Society.''According to the memoirs of opera singer Zoia Gaidai, this group of artists, which primarily consisted of peasants, workers and soldiers, helped popularize Russian piano music. In September 1922, he gave his debut in Zhytomyr, performing his own compositions. Two years later, he was invited to Moscow for a recital at the Association for Contemporary Music, where he met with composers and musicians. During this period, Kosenko's piano works were published for the first time. He then performed as a virtuoso pianist in recitals and formed a piano trio along with violinist Volodymyr Skorokhod and cellist Vasyly Kolomyitsev, giving over one hundred free concerts throughout UkSSR between 1923 and 1929.

In 1927, Kosenko was invited by the Association of the Proletarian Musicians of Ukrainian SSR to give a concert in Kharkiv

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