Vladimir Ivanovich Pohl

Vladimir Ivanovich Pohl

Wladimir Iwanowitsch Pohl ( Russian Владимир Иванович Поль ; born January 1, 1875 in Paris ; † June 21, 1962 ) was a German- Russian composer , pianist and music teacher .

Life

Pohl's German father, a neurologist , was naturalized in Russia as Iwan Friedrichowitsch Pohl. Pohl was born in Paris, where his father was defending his dissertation at the University of Paris , and grew up in Kiev . His mother Alexandra Sergejewna nee von Peitsch was a pianist and her son's first music teacher . Pohl had enjoyed drawing since his early youth, so he attended Mykola Muraschko's painting school in Kiev , where Nikolai Ge also taught. Pohl graduated from the University of Kiev in the natural history department of the physics and mathematics faculty . Then he followed his love for music and studied at the Kiev Conservatory of the Department of the Imperial Russian Music Society (RMO) in Vladimir Puchalski's piano class and then music theory with Eugeniusz Ryb . (The Kiev Conservatory split off from this music academy in 1913. )

In 1903 the family moved to Moscow . Pohl married the pianist Marija Stanislawnowna Novizka, but their marriage soon fell apart after the birth of two children. He passed his final exam in 1903 and was appointed freelance artist . In 1904 he went to the Crimea for a cure because of illness . He taught and, thanks to the support of César Cuis, became director of the RMO's Crimean section. In Yalta he met the singer Anna Mikhailovna Petrunkevich (1874–1955), daughter of the politician Mikhail Petrunkevich , who appeared under the stage pseudonym Jan-Ruban. They performed together with Pohl accompanying them. They continued their cooperation in Moscow and lived together. Pohl became a student of Sergei Taneyev in his composition class at the Moscow Conservatory . He composed études , waltzes and romances based on verses by Fyodor Tjuttschew , Alexei Tolstoy and Apollon Maikow ( St. Petersburg 1912). The artists Wassili Polenow , Nikolai Ge , Alexander Benois , Sergei Merkurow and Konstantin Stanislawski came to Pohl's Moscow apartment . Pohl repeatedly visited Lev Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana , with whose eldest son Sergei Tolstoy he was friends. According to Felix Jussupov's memories , Pohl and Jan-Ruban were often guests in the palace of Countess Sofja Panina in Mishor (on the south coast of the Crimea between Yalta and Alupka ), where politicians and artists met.

In 1905 Pohl became director of the Moscow branch of the RMO (until 1910). After 1911 he became director of the Empress Maria Music Institute as the successor to Sergei Rachmaninoff . As a lover of philosophy and occultism , he became known with Nikolai Losski , Pjotr ​​Uspenski and Georges Gurdjieff . He practiced gymnastics and yoga , abstained from alcohol and tobacco and strove for Kalokagathia . In 1914 he composed a string quintet with Indian motifs . Hazrat Inayat Khan introduced the motifs to him when Alexander Tairow opened the Chamber Theater with Kalidasa's drama Shakuntala .

In the revolutionary year of 1917 , Pohl and Jan-Ruban moved to the Crimea. They gave concerts with great success , including in front of the Red Guards . Jan-Ruban sang songs by Schubert , Tschaikowski , Debussy and also by Pohl. In Gaspra Pohl met the young Vladimir Nabokov and became his friend, so that Nabokov dedicated a poem to him. In 1922 Pohl emigrated with Jan-Ruban via Constantinople to Berlin . In 1925 they settled in Paris .

In Paris, Pohl founded the Russian Music Society together with others in 1931 and formed together with NA Konovalov (former trade minister of the Russian Provisional Government in 1917 and student of Sergei Rachmaninoff), JL Rubinstein (legal advisor for Russian affairs of the League of Nations ), NN Tscherepnin , Thomas de Hartmann and PJ Striemer (composer and music teacher ) took over the first management. The society maintained the Russian Conservatory in Paris , founded in 1923 by professors from the St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories , the first director of which was Prince Sergei Volkonsky . The honorary director was Rachmaninov and, after his death, Pohl, who headed the composition class and the piano class until 1953 . From 1937 until his death, Pohl was one of the directors of the music publisher MP Belaieff in Leipzig (later Bonn ). He worked as a music critic and wrote about the history and theory of music and the work of Nikolai Medtner . He created a new cycle of romances (Paris 1927), three small ballets that were performed in France and the USA , and a symphonic poem based on the words of Michail Issakowski (1961). He also composed some piano pieces for the left hand.

Pohl died as a result of an accident. He was buried in Jan-Ruban's grave in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois . Pohl's wife Marija had stayed in Russia with their two children after the October Revolution . The mathematician and theologian Oleg fell victim to repression in the Caucasus in 1929 , while his daughter Tamara was living as a music teacher in Moscow and was 94 years old.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} julia & keld: Vladimir Ivanovich Pohl (accessed June 22, 2017).
2. ↑ Андреев А .: Владимир Иванович Поль . In: Возрождение . No. 128 , 1962.
3. ↑ Мищенко А. А .: В. И. Поль . In: Вест. РСХД . No. 65 , 1962.
4. ↑ julia & keld: Anna Mikhaylovna Petrunkevich Rouban-Pohl (accessed June 22, 2017).
5. ↑ Князь Феликс Юсупов: Мемуары . Захаров, Moscow 2011, ISBN 978-5-8159-1045-4 , p. 437 .
6. ↑ Thomas de Hartmann: Our life with Mr Gurdjieff . Harper & Row, 1983.
7. ↑ Хазрат Инайят Хан. Мистицизм звука . Сфера, Moscow 1997.
8. ↑ Сергей Маковский: На Парнасе Серебряного века . Издательский дом XXI век, Moscow 2000.
9. ↑ Jane Grayson, Arnold McMillin, Priscilla Meyer: Nabokov's World, Volume 1: The Shape of Nabokov's World . 2002.
10. ↑ Alexander Nikolayevich Pohl: Poème: pour la main gauche (op. 17) . MP Belaieff, Boosey and Hawkes, Leipzig, New York 1938.