Alexander Chuhaldin

Alexander Chuhaldin ( Russian Александр Григорьевич Чухалдин ; born August 27, 1892 in Vladikavkas , Russian Empire ; † January 20, 1951 in Victoria / British Columbia ) was a Canadian violinist , conductor , composer and music teacher .

Chuhaldin became a pupil of Jules Conus at the Moscow Conservatory when he was eight and appeared in public for the first time when he was nine. From 1909 he was a violinist in the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theater , whose concertmaster he became in 1922. From 1923 he taught violin at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1924 he fled abroad via Harbin , China , and went on a concert tour through Asia, Australia and New Zealand. In Perth he met the pianist Annette Hillhouse , who became his wife and piano accompanist.

In 1927 Chuhaldin came to Canada. There he taught at the Toronto Conservatory of Music , where u. a. Murray Adaskin , Harry Bergart , Isidor Desser , Betty-Ann Fischer-Byfield , Hyman Goodman , Blain Mathé , Albert Pratz and Ivan Romanoff were among his students. Since the early 1930s he worked as a radio conductor, first for the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission , then for the CBC . He directed u. a. the Symphonic Strings and the CBC Strings and conducted the world premiere of Benjamin Britten's Young Apollo, dedicated to him , in 1939 with the Melodic Strings and the composer at the piano .

As a guest conductor, he led the WPA Civic Symphony in New York in 1936 and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1941 . In 1948 he became conductor of the newly formed Forest Hill Community Orchestra in Toronto. Chuhaldin composed several works for string orchestra, five pieces for violin solo and more than 30 transcriptions for string orchestra.

source

• Elaine Keillor: Alexander Chuhaldin ( English, French ) In: Encyclopedia of Music in Canada . published by The Canadian Encyclopedia . December 16, 2013. Accessed July 23, 2020.