 The St. Petersburg State Conservatory, the first public school of music in Russia was inaugurated on September, 20th, 1862. The foundation of the Conservatory crowned the efforts of a group of progressive-minded musicians of the XIX century. It boasts Anton Rubinstein, Henrick Wieniawski, Karl Schubert, Gavriil Lomakin as founding members.
By that time the distinctive features of Russian musical performance style had been developed by generations of Russian singers, pianists, conductors, string and wind players, who were competing successfully with their foreign colleagues in the Imperial and private opera companies, various ensembles, orchestras and choir. Musicians from Italy, Bohemia, and Germany would flock to Russia, and would, in most cases, settle there permanently. In the first half of the 19th century, St. Petersburg, on a par with Vienna, Paris, Prague, London and Berlin, began to attract the world-famous artists. Thus it was here that the first performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis was given in 1824, and subsequently a second performance of his Ninth Symphony was heard. Among the renowned guest performers who visited St. Petersburg were Liszt, Berlioz, Schumann and Wagner, to name but a few. It was from here that Beethoven received a commission to write string quarters and Verdi was commissioned to compose opera. Finally, it was in St. Petersburg that a remarkable school of composition arose which was to shape and develop, in the works of the great Russian national composers Dmitry Bortnyansky, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Mikhail Glinka and their contemporaries, the distinguishing features of the style and idiom of Russian music. In the middle of the 19th century, in an atmosphere of social, cultural and political ferment and reforms, the new Imperial Music Society was founded which launched an extensive programme. One of the most important projects undertaken by the Society, which was active throughout Russia, was organization of conservatories in the country. Loyal to the traditions of its founders and numerous generations of progressive musicians of the home-land, the Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory in St. Petersburg is striving to lofty professional ideals and active propaganda of the world musical culture. |