Alexander Gauk studied composition with Glazunov and conducting with Nikolai Tcherepnin at the St Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1917. Immediately engaged as a conductor at the Petrograd Music Drama Theatre (as it was named following the Russian Revolution), in 1923 he moved to the State Opera and Ballet Theatre (later renamed as the Kirov Theatre before reverting to its original name of the Maryinsky Theatre), remaining there until 1931. He worked as chief conductor of the Leningrad (now St Petersburg) Philharmonic Orchestra from 1930 to 1934, later referring to the orchestra as ‘my teacher’. During his time in Leningrad Gauk taught at the Conservatory and his pupils there included Evgeny Mravinsky and Alexander Melik-Pashayev, both of whom went on to become major musical leaders in the Soviet Union, as well as Ilya Musin, who himself became a notable teacher of conducting.

In 1936 Gauk was appointed as the first chief conductor of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, now known as the Russian State Symphony Orchestra. Although the orchestra was based in Moscow, touring formed an important part of its schedule and it set out on its first extensive tour with Gauk a mere three months after its formation, travelling as far afield as the Ukraine. Gauk remained in charge of the orchestra until 1941, when he was succeeded as chief conductor by Nathan Rakhlin. From 1941 to 1943 he taught at the Conservatory in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia, while still maintaining his other teaching commitments at the Moscow Conservatory, where he was active from 1939 until his death. In 1953 Gauk took on his last major appointment, as chief conductor of the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra (also known as the All-Union Radio Symphony Orchestra), again remaining with this body up to his death. As previously he toured extensively, visiting Mexico, Cuba, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Eastern Germany and Japan.

Gauk was a major figure in Soviet musical life, leading the first performances of numerous compositions by Myaskovsky, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Shaporin and other Soviet composers; he was the dedicatee of Myaskovsky’s Symphony No. 17. It was also Gauk who reconstructed Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 1 from the orchestral parts in the Leningrad Conservatory library; he went on to conduct the work in 1945, the first time it had been performed since its failure in 1897, when the conductor was none other than Gauk’s own teacher Glazunov. Working within a structure completely different from that of the recording industry of Western Europe and the USA with its commercial imperative, but rather one in which recording for the state recording company Melodya was an expected part of a distinguished musician’s activities, Gauk made numerous recordings which were released in the West on many different labels. Most of his recorded repertoire was made up of Russian music, of which he was an outstanding interpreter.

Although there are by comparison relatively few examples of Gauk’s conducting of music from, for instance, the Austro-German school, those that do exist show him to have been a lively and vigorous musician in non-Russian repertoire. He was a frequent accompanist of the Soviet Union’s most outstanding instrumentalists and his accounts of music by his contemporaries, such as Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Khachaturian carry especial conviction. To quote Gauk himself, ‘I can regard myself as one who has shared to the full extent with the composers all the stages of Soviet music’s development, all the difficulties, occasional failures and disappointments and still greater delights.’

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Discography