Vasily Zolotarev


Vasily Andreyevich Zolotarev, also romanized as Zolotaryov, was a Russian composer, music teacher, and People's Artist of Russia.

Biography

Vasily Zolotarev was born in the city of Taganrog in 1872. Studied music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory under direction of Mily Balakirev in the class of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, graduating in 1900. Zolotarev lectured at Moscow Conservatory, at the Belarus State Academy of Music in 1933–1941, and other conservatories. Among his students in Minsk was Mieczysław Weinberg.
Vasily Zolotarev is author of three operas, seven symphonies, three concerti, six string quartets, songs and other works.

''Rhapsodie hébraïque''

The New York Times wrote of Zolotarev's Rhapsodie hébraïque that it was "based on Hebrew melodies now used in Russia… among the Jewish families of the lower classes. … found that upon a Hebrew racial idiom there had been grafted some of the characteristic of Russian music just as the irreducible language of the Jews in any country is overlaid by a few words or modes of expression belonging to the land of their environment. Thus the melodies… are the musical equivalent of Yiddish." They described the melodies as "built upon an Oriental scale… earmark is an augmented interval instead of that found in the diatonic scale between the third and fourth notes.

Selected works

;Stage
;Orchestral
;Concertante
;Chamber music
;Piano
;Choral
;Vocal
;Literary