The cellist Alexander Ivashkin died

In London, at the 66th year of his life, a Russian cellist, conductor and musicologist Alexander Ivashkin died.

This was reported on the official website of the musician.

Alexander Vasilievich Ivashkin was born in 1948 in Blagoveshchensk, in 1971 he graduated from the Gnesin Musical and Pedagogical Institute as a cellist and musicologist, also engaged in conducting at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Boris Khaykin and Valery Polyansky.

In 1978-1990, Alexander Ivashkin was the soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra and the artistic director of the Bolshoi Theater Solo player, in the 1990s he taught a cello and a chamber ensemble at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), since 1999 he was a professor and head of the faculty of performing, as well as the director of the Center for Russian Music in the Center for Russian Music in Goldsmith College of London University.

He toured as a cellist and conductor in more than 40 countries, worked with leading world orchestras, in 1995 he became the artistic director of the International Festival and the Adam cellists.

One of the last performances of Alexander Ivashkin took place in May 2013 in the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, where he first presented the public for the cell for the cello with the orchestra Gabriel Prokofiev, as well as a new reading of concertino with the orchestra Sol-Minor Sergei Prokofiev, reports BBC .

Candidate of Art History (1979), Doctor of Arts (1993), author of 18 books and more than 200 articles, including works about Svyatoslav Knushevitsky, Mstislav Rostropovich, Kshishtof Pengeretsky, Charles Ives.

A special place in the work of Alexander Ivashkin was occupied by Alfred Schnita, with whom he was associated with personal friendship. By the 40th anniversary of Ivashkin, the composer wrote the work “Klingende Buchstaben” (“Sounding letters”), taking as the source material the monogram of the names of the anniversary and his own.

In 1987, Alexander Ivashkin published an annotated catalog of works by Alfred Schnita, in 1993 in Turin and in 1996 a biography of Schnitka was published in London, and in 1994 Ivashkin prepared and printed the book “Conversations with Alfred Schnitka”, in 2004, the collection of articles by Schnitka about music was published by Ivashkin.