Nikolai Malko
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Malko, Nikolay (b Brailov, 4 May 1883; d Sydney, 23 June 1961). American conductor of Russian birth. A pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, Lyadov, Glazunov and Nikolay Tcherepnin at the St Petersburg Conservatory, he also studied with Felix Mottl in Munich. Beginning as a conductor of ballet and opera at St Petersburg in 1908, he became a leading musical figure of the early Soviet regime, conducting extensively and holding a professorship at the Moscow Conservatory (1918–25) and at the Leningrad Conservatory (1925–9). While in Moscow he gave the first performance of Myaskovsky‘s Fifth Symphony in 1920; in Leningrad, where he became chief conductor of the Leningrad PO (1926–9), he gave the first performance of Shostakovich’s First Symphony in 1926. But with the diminution of artistic freedom in the USSR he left the country, from 1929 making frequent appearances as guest conductor in Vienna, Prague, Buenos Aires and, with particular success, in Copenhagen, where he was permanent guest conductor of the Danish State RO from 1928 to 1932. He established a reputation in London (Royal Philharmonic Society, 1933) and introduced Shostakovich’s First Symphony (with the LSO) in 1935.
In 1940 he settled in Chicago, conducting many American orchestras though not achieving any major musical directorships, and lectured at Mills College, California, and De Paul University. He resumed his international career after World War II but not in major posts. With Norman Del Mar he took over the declining Yorkshire SO in 1954 (it closed the following year) and from 1957 was conductor of the Sydney SO. In 1959 he revisited the USSR. His recordings, chiefly with the Philharmonia or Danish State Radio orchestras, are mainly of Russian composers, including such lesser-known ones as Glier and Ippolitov-Ivanov. Though he lacked warmth and magnetism on the platform he was a lively interpreter and an acknowledged expert in the technique of conducting and its instruction – he wrote a textbook on the subject in English, The Conductor and his Baton (Copenhagen, 1950), and a volume of memoirs, A Certain Art (New York, 1966).
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Gosudarstvennaya akademicheskaya filarmoniya: desyat' let simfonicheskoy muzïki, 1917–1927 [The [Leningrad] State Philharmonic: ten years of symphonic music] (Leningrad, 1928)
ARTHUR JACOBS
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| Preceded by: Valery Berdyaev |
Musical Directors, St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra 1926–1930 |
Succeeded by: Alexander Gauk |
| Preceded by: Launy Grøndahl |
Principal Conductors, Danish National Symphony Orchestra 1930–1937 |
Succeeded by: Fritz Busch |
| Preceded by: Eugene Goosens |
Chief Conductors, Sydney Symphony Orchestra 1957–1961 |
Succeeded by: Dean Dixon |
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