Anton Arensky

Anton [Antony] Stepanovich Arensky
(b Novgorod, 30 June/12 July 1861; d nr Terioki, Finland [now Zelenogorsk, Russia], 12/25 Feb 1906).

Russian composer, pianist and conductor. His father, a doctor, was a keen cellist, and his mother an excellent pianist who gave him his first music lessons. By the age of nine he had already composed some songs and piano pieces. When the family moved to St Petersburg, Arensky took lessons with Zikke before entering the St Petersburg Conservatory (1879), where he studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov and counterpoint and fugue with Johannsen. He graduated with a gold medal in 1882. Even before this Rimsky-Korsakov had been sufficiently impressed by Arensky’s talent to entrust him with a share in preparing the vocal score of The Snow Maiden. After graduating Arensky went straight to the Moscow Conservatory as a professor of harmony and counterpoint; among his pupils were to be Rachmaninoff, Skryabin and Glière. The move to Moscow brought him into close contact with Tchaikovsky, who gave him much practical encouragement, and Taneyev. From 1888 to 1895 he directed the concerts of the Russian Choral Society and also appeared as a conductor at symphony concerts. In 1889 he was appointed to the council of the Synodal School of Church Music in Moscow, remaining until 1893. One of Arensky’s greatest personal successes was with his opera Son na Volge (A Dream on the Volga), based on the same Ostrovsky play as Tchaikovsky’s opera Voyevoda, and produced in Moscow in 1891. Parts of the opera had been composed under Rimsky-Korsakov’s supervision when Arensky was still a conservatory student.