Сергей Танеев

Sergey Ivanovich Taneev (in Russian: Сергей Иванович Танеев), born November 25, 1856 in Vladimir and died June 19, 1915 in Dioudkovo near Moscow, is a Russian composer. Born into a family of the nobility, of great culture, he was very early in contact with music. His fashionable uncle from Brittany, Alexander Taneev, was himself a composer. He began to learn the piano at the age of five, and entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1866, the very year of its foundation. There was for professor Tchaikovsky for composition and Nikolai Rubinstein, the founder, for the piano. He completed it in 1875, and was the first student to win first prize in both disciplines. That same year, he made his concert debut, playing Brahms' First Concerto on the piano, and later Tchaikovsky's Premier. This one liked very much his game, and asked him to create his Second. After his death, Taneïev will complete and create his Third Concerto. He then left for Paris, where he remained a few years and met among others Ivan Tourgueniev, Gustave Flaubert, César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns. In 1878, he became professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory, and was even its director from 1885 to 1889. Among his students, on whom he had an important influence, were Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Reinhold Glière, Paul Juon, Nikolai Medtner, Arseni Koreshchenko, Vsevolod Petrovitch Zaderatski Friend of the family of Leo Tolstoy, he spent the summers of 1895 and 1896 in their house. He moved further and further away from his family life, embarrassed their children and made Tolstoy jealous. Taneev's last years were darkened by alcoholism. He died of pneumonia in 1915, shortly after attending the funeral of his student Scriabin.