Yakov Kreizberg, who died on March 15 aged 51, was a Russian-born conductor who enjoyed great success in Britain, bringing to the podium much of the athletic charisma, energetic enthusiasm and forceful personality of his mentor, Leonard Bernstein .
Yakov Kreizberg Photo: ALAMY
Although a master of the Russian repertoire, Kreizberg was an equally passionate exponent of the great Czech operas of Janácek; he also gave his audiences a deep insight into the great Classical and Romantic works. He championed music banned by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s and was one of the first to perform music by Berthold Goldschmidt, who enjoyed a late flourish of popularity in his 10th decade in the 1990s.
Kreizberg was an immediate hit at his Glyndebourne debut in 1992, conducting Jenufa, Janácek’s tale of infanticide and redemption. He went on to become chief conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 1995 to 2000, building up the orchestra’s self-esteem and taking it on its first – and widely acclaimed – tour of the United States, including to Carnegie Hall, New York.
His longest relationship was with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he served as chief conductor for seven years from 2003, creating a recording legacy that is almost unparalleled in its breadth and beauty.
Overshadowing his career and personal life, however, was a tangled tale of bitter sibling rivalry. Kreizberg, who took his mother’s surname for professional purposes, and Semyon Bychkov, his fellow conductor and elder brother by seven years, had reportedly not spoken for many years.
Yakov Kreizberg was born in what was then Leningrad on October 24 1959. His maternal great-grandfather, also Yakov Kreizberg, had conducted at the opera house in fin de siècle Odessa. By the age of 12 Yakov’s heart was set on a conducting career, and he was soon studying with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatoire.
His brother had left the Soviet Union in 1975, and Kreizberg was anxious to do likewise, fearing that his sibling’s defection would affect his career in Leningrad. There was also the chilling prospect of military service. “In another couple of years I would have been drafted, and at that time it would have meant Afghanistan,” he recalled in 1999.
The problem was that his father, May Bychkov, was a prominent Soviet military scientist and had been told by the KGB that he would never be allowed out. As a result, his parents divorced to allow the teenager and his mother — a French teacher — to emigrate. Yakov recalled how they arrived in New York in 1976 with no money and only two suitcases. Meanwhile, the Soviets had prevented him from taking any handwritten material — meaning that he had abandoned a portfolio of youthful compositions, several of which had been publicly performed in Russia. They are now lost.
By the age of 22, Kreizberg was accompanying Rimsky-Korsakov’s one-act opera Mozart and Salieri from the piano in a small theatre in New York. He then spent two summers at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein and a third with him in Los Angeles. On one occasion Bernstein took notes while watching Kreizberg rehearse Strauss’s Don Juan, notes that the young conductor thereafter kept in his score and to which he often referred.
He won the Eugene Ormandy prize in Michigan and, in 1986, four years after taking American citizenship, the Leopold Stokowski conducting competition. He conducted the Mannes College orchestra in New York from 1985 to 1988.
Soon Kreizberg was back in Europe to begin a gentle climb through the regional opera houses of what was then East Germany, before landing at the Komische Oper in Berlin in 1994. There he worked with the stage director Harry Kupfer until, in 2001, he grew tired of the decline in funding.
His Glyndebourne debut in 1992 — conducting Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s production of Jenufa starring Anja Silja — was described as “one of the most sensational debuts in living memory”. That year he also made his first appearance in London, with the Philharmonia, and in 1993 charmed the Proms audience with a searing account of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony — a concert that included a dazzling performance of Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto with his compatriot, Vladimir Ovchinnikov.
His debut at ENO was in Jonathan Miller’s production of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier in 1994, when he also returned to the Proms with the Australian Youth Orchestra.
Colleagues tried to dissuade him from succeeding Andrew Litton in the Bournemouth post, insisting that it was too far from the musical centre of London; but Kreizberg saw it as an opportunity to build up the ensemble. Among his many innovations was the commissioning of a work by Peteris Vasks, a Latvian composer, as well as new music from the British composer Judith Bingham.
After his initial foray into the Sussex countryside, Kreizberg enjoyed a number of visits to Glyndebourne, including with Kátya Kabanová, another Janácek opera, in 1998. He claimed that it was the only place to which he was prepared to commit for long seasons. “The best conditions in the world ... beautiful countryside, lots and lots of rehearsal, only London to go to”, he told an interviewer in 2006, the same year in which he conducted Phyllida Lloyd’s staging of Macbeth at the Royal Opera, starring Thomas Hampson.
He returned to St Petersburg in 2000 to conduct, but was disappointed by what he found. “All the best musicians have gone, and the orchestra plays badly,” he said of the once-mighty Leningrad Philharmonic. Back in the United States, in 2002, he conducted a two-week festival of Bernstein’s music in Minnesota and Janácek’s The Makropoulos Case at Chicago Lyric Opera; the following year he stepped in at short notice for the ailing Wolfgang Sawallisch with the Philadelphia Orchestra on a three-week, 13-concert tour of North and South America.
American musicians, however, didn’t really “get” Kreizberg; the Philadelphians, used to the gentler and more predictable ways of their regular maestro, took the unusual step of formally asking Kreizberg to moderate his tempos and tone down his exuberance on the podium.
He enjoyed a regular musical partnership, both in the concert hall and on CD, with the German violinist Julia Fischer, including an appearance together in the Brahms Violin Concerto at the Proms in 2008. He was also principal guest conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and worked with the Russian National Orchestra.
Kreizberg was thin and wiry, with a broad smile and a witty sense of humour. If he was at times demanding, both of himself and his musicians, he was also kind, and a true professional who was determined that the show should always go on. On one occasion, while conducting in Bournemouth, his arm froze after he slipped a disc; despite the intense pain, he used his thick, dark eyebrows and quizzical facial expressions to get through Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.
Despite several years of treatment for cancer, he conducted an all-Russian programme in Amsterdam on St Valentine’s Day before returning to his home in Monte Carlo, where last season he had been appointed artistic director of the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Yakov Kreizberg married the American conductor Amy Andersson, who survives him with their two sons.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8396357/Yakov-Kreizberg.html
The problem was that his father, May Bychkov, was a prominent Soviet military scientist and had been told by the KGB that he would never be allowed out. As a result, his parents divorced to allow the teenager and his mother — a French teacher — to emigrate. Yakov recalled how they arrived in New York in 1976 with no money and only two suitcases. Meanwhile, the Soviets had prevented him from taking any handwritten material — meaning that he had abandoned a portfolio of youthful compositions, several of which had been publicly performed in Russia. They are now lost.
By the age of 22, Kreizberg was accompanying Rimsky-Korsakov’s one-act opera Mozart and Salieri from the piano in a small theatre in New York. He then spent two summers at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein and a third with him in Los Angeles. On one occasion Bernstein took notes while watching Kreizberg rehearse Strauss’s Don Juan, notes that the young conductor thereafter kept in his score and to which he often referred.
He won the Eugene Ormandy prize in Michigan and, in 1986, four years after taking American citizenship, the Leopold Stokowski conducting competition. He conducted the Mannes College orchestra in New York from 1985 to 1988.
Soon Kreizberg was back in Europe to begin a gentle climb through the regional opera houses of what was then East Germany, before landing at the Komische Oper in Berlin in 1994. There he worked with the stage director Harry Kupfer until, in 2001, he grew tired of the decline in funding.
His Glyndebourne debut in 1992 — conducting Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s production of Jenufa starring Anja Silja — was described as “one of the most sensational debuts in living memory”. That year he also made his first appearance in London, with the Philharmonia, and in 1993 charmed the Proms audience with a searing account of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony — a concert that included a dazzling performance of Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto with his compatriot, Vladimir Ovchinnikov.
His debut at ENO was in Jonathan Miller’s production of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier in 1994, when he also returned to the Proms with the Australian Youth Orchestra.
Colleagues tried to dissuade him from succeeding Andrew Litton in the Bournemouth post, insisting that it was too far from the musical centre of London; but Kreizberg saw it as an opportunity to build up the ensemble. Among his many innovations was the commissioning of a work by Peteris Vasks, a Latvian composer, as well as new music from the British composer Judith Bingham.
After his initial foray into the Sussex countryside, Kreizberg enjoyed a number of visits to Glyndebourne, including with Kátya Kabanová, another Janácek opera, in 1998. He claimed that it was the only place to which he was prepared to commit for long seasons. “The best conditions in the world ... beautiful countryside, lots and lots of rehearsal, only London to go to”, he told an interviewer in 2006, the same year in which he conducted Phyllida Lloyd’s staging of Macbeth at the Royal Opera, starring Thomas Hampson.
He returned to St Petersburg in 2000 to conduct, but was disappointed by what he found. “All the best musicians have gone, and the orchestra plays badly,” he said of the once-mighty Leningrad Philharmonic. Back in the United States, in 2002, he conducted a two-week festival of Bernstein’s music in Minnesota and Janácek’s The Makropoulos Case at Chicago Lyric Opera; the following year he stepped in at short notice for the ailing Wolfgang Sawallisch with the Philadelphia Orchestra on a three-week, 13-concert tour of North and South America.
American musicians, however, didn’t really “get” Kreizberg; the Philadelphians, used to the gentler and more predictable ways of their regular maestro, took the unusual step of formally asking Kreizberg to moderate his tempos and tone down his exuberance on the podium.
He enjoyed a regular musical partnership, both in the concert hall and on CD, with the German violinist Julia Fischer, including an appearance together in the Brahms Violin Concerto at the Proms in 2008. He was also principal guest conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and worked with the Russian National Orchestra.
Kreizberg was thin and wiry, with a broad smile and a witty sense of humour. If he was at times demanding, both of himself and his musicians, he was also kind, and a true professional who was determined that the show should always go on. On one occasion, while conducting in Bournemouth, his arm froze after he slipped a disc; despite the intense pain, he used his thick, dark eyebrows and quizzical facial expressions to get through Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.
Despite several years of treatment for cancer, he conducted an all-Russian programme in Amsterdam on St Valentine’s Day before returning to his home in Monte Carlo, where last season he had been appointed artistic director of the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Yakov Kreizberg married the American conductor Amy Andersson, who survives him with their two sons.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8396357/Yakov-Kreizberg.html
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