Konstantin Ivanov

Konstantin Konstantinovich Ivanov (21 May 1907 [O.S. 8 May] – 15 April 1984) was a Soviet conductor and composer. Career A brief article in The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia says he was born on May 8, 1907, in the town of Yefremov or Efremov (Russian: Ефре́мов) in the Tula Oblast. At the age of 13, he was adopted by a regiment of the Red Army. He became a trumpeter in army orchestras. He attended the Moscow Conservatory where he studied conducting with the conductor L. M. Ginzburg. Ivanov graduated in 1937, and the following year won the third prize at the first edition of the All-Union Conductors Competition. Engagements with the Bolshoi Theatre and the All-Union Radio Symphony Orchestra followed in 1941. In 1945, Ivanov succeeded Nathan Rakhlin as Principal Conductor of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra. Under Ivanov's direction, the orchestra began an extensive program of touring. Initially this was to the republics of the Soviet Union, but in 1956 it performed in the Soviet allied states of Poland and Romania. As the Cold War thawed, Ivanov and the orchestra travelled outside the Communist bloc. In 1958 they made an appearance at an international exposition in Brussels where they performed for Queen Elizabeth of Belgium. In the same year they also visited China. In 1960, the orchestra visited the United States, then in 1961 appeared at the Vienna Festival. Konstantin Ivanov was succeeded as Principal Conductor of the USSR Symphony Orchestra in 1965 by Yevgeny Svetlanov. His reputation in later years, at least in the west, was somewhat eclipsed by the rise of a younger generation of Soviet conductors such as Svetlanov, Rozhdestvensky and Kondrashin, all of whom became much better known, and who travelled abroad more frequently. He died on April 15, 1984, only 16 days shy of his 77th birthday. Recordings Some of Ivanov's recordings became available in the west through the association of Britain's EMI Group with the Soviet state label Melodiya.