Alexander Siloti

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Alexander Ilich Siloti or Ziloti (Russian: Александр Ильич Зилоти) (9 October 1863 near Kharkov - 8 December 1945, New York) was a Russian-Ukrainian pianist, conductor and composer.

In the 21st century the art of transcription has made a significant return. Such music from great artists of the past, including Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Liszt, has now resumed its formidable importance. One of the great exponents of that art is also seeing his name rapidly restored to the pantheon.

Alexander Siloti (Ziloti is closer to the Russian pronunciation and transliteration; the stress is on the second syllable) is a figure just now being returned from legend. Carl Fischer has published a large anthology of Siloti piano transcriptions, and Rowman and Littlefield has published the first full-scale biography. Since both volumes were released there has been a marked upswing in public interest and critical examination.

In the generation prior to 1917, Ziloti was one of Russia's most important artists, with music by Arensky, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky dedicated to him. At the Moscow Conservatory he studied piano with Nikolai Zverev from 1871, and under Nikolai Rubinstein, Taneyev, Tchaikovsky, and Hubert from 1875. He graduated with the Gold Medal in Piano in 1881.

He worked with Franz Liszt in Weimar (1883-1886), co-founded the Liszt-Verein in Leipzig, and there made his professional debut on 19 November 1883. Returning in 1887 Ziloti taught at the Moscow Conservatory, where his students included Goldenweiser, Maximov, and first-cousin Sergei Rachmaninoff. In this period he began work as editor for Tchaikovsky, particularly on the First and Second piano concerti.

He quit the Conservatory in May 1891, and from 1892-1900 lived and toured in Europe. He also toured New York, Boston, Cincinnati and Chicago in 1898. It was on these tours that he first introduced to the West the famous C-sharp Minor Prelude composed by his cousin Rachmaninoff. Together with Rachmaninoff he also gave the world premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 2.

From 1901-1903 Ziloti led the Moscow Philharmonic; from 1903-1917 he organized, financed, and conducted the supremely influential Ziloti Concerts in St Petersburg. He presented Auer, Casals, Chaliapin, Enescu, Hofmann, Landowska, Mengelberg, Mottl, Nikisch, Schoenberg and Weingartner, and local and world premieres by Debussy, Elgar, Glazunov, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Sibelius, Stravinsky and others. Diaghilev first heard Stravinsky at a Ziloti Concert.

In 1918 Ziloti was appointed Intendant of the Mariinsky Theatre, but late the following year fled Soviet Russia for England, finally settling in New York in December 1921. From 1925-1942 he taught at the Juilliard Graduate School, performing occasionally in recital, and in November 1930 gave a legendary all-Liszt concert with Toscanini. Ziloti's private students included Marc Blitzstein and Eugene Istomin.

He wrote over 200 piano arrangements and transcriptions, and orchestral editions of Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi. Ziloti also made 8 piano rolls and 26 minutes of home-cut discs.

[edit] Sources

• C. Barber. Lost in the Stars -- The Forgotten Musical Life of Alexander Siloti (Rowman and Littlefield, New York, 2003)
• S. Bertensson. "Knight of Music." Etude 64:369, July 1946
• B. Dexter. "Remembering Siloti, A Russian Star." American Music Teacher, April/May 1989
• J. Gottlieb. "Remembering Alexander Siloti." Juilliard Journal, Nov 1990
• L.M. Kutateladze and L.N. Raaben, eds., Alexander Il'yich Ziloti, 1863-1945: vospominaniya i pis'ma (Leningrad, 1963)
• A. Ziloti. Moi vospominaniya o F. Liste (St Petersburg, 1911; My Memories of Liszt, Eng. trl. Edinburgh, 1913 and New York, 1986)