Melik-Pashaev, Aleksandr Shamilevich

Melik-Pashaev, Aleksandr Shamil’evich

 

Born Oct. 10 (23), 1905, in Tbilisi; died June 18, 1964, in Moscow. Soviet conductor. People’s Artist of the USSR (1951).

Melik-Pashaev graduated in 1930 from the Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied orchestral conducting under A. V. Gauk. From 1923 to 1931 he was a conductor at the Tbilisi Opera House. He became a conductor at the Bolshoi Theater in 1931 and was principal conductor there from 1953 to 1962. Melik-Pashaev’s best interpretations included Glinka’s Ruslan and Liudmila, Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades and The Little Slippers, and Prokofiev’s War and Peace. In orchestral concerts he usually conducted monumental classical works. He went on tour abroad in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.

At the All-Union Conductors’ Competition in 1938, MelikPashaev won second prize. In 1942 and 1943 he won the State Prize of the USSR. He was also awarded three orders, as well as various medals.

REFERENCE

Glezer, R. “Master opernogo teatra.” Sovetskaia muzyka, 1961, no. 9.