Curated playlist
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States
- Igor StravinskyIgor Stravinsky once received a score back from his mentor in the mail, returned with a note reading: "Not delivered on account of death of addressee." That mentor was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the most powerful figure in Russian music, and…
- Marc ChagallMarc Chagall spent nearly a century alive on earth, and almost every one of those years was spent either fleeing something or painting it. Born Moishe Shagal in 1887 in a Jewish family near Vitebsk, in what is now Belarus, he died in 1985…
- Helena BlavatskyHelena Blavatsky preferred to be known by three letters: HPB. The sobriquet came from her friend Henry Steel Olcott, and it stuck to a woman who spoke Russian, Georgian, English, French, Italian, Arabic, and Sanskrit. She wore loose robes…
- Sergei RachmaninoffSergei Rachmaninoff stepped onto the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in May 1892 knowing, he later admitted, that his one-act opera was "sure to fail." He was nineteen years old. The audience disagreed so completely that the theatre agreed on…
- Vladimir NabokovVladimir Nabokov arrived in the United States in May 1940 aboard the SS Champlain, a Russian exile who spoke three languages and had already written nine novels that almost nobody in America had read. He was forty years old, nearly broke,…
- Nicholas RoerichNicholas Roerich left behind more than 7,000 paintings, a spiritual movement that still has followers today, and an international treaty signed at the White House in April 1935. Born on the 9th of October 1874 in Saint Petersburg, he died…
- Sergei ProkofievSergei Prokofiev died on the 5th of March 1953 , the same day as Joseph Stalin. His coffin had to be carried by hand through the back streets of Moscow, away from the vast crowds mourning the dictator. About 30 people attended his funeral.…
- Nicolas SlonimskyNicolas Slonimsky died on the 25th of December 1995 in Los Angeles, at the age of 101. He had spent the last decade of his life celebrating that improbable longevity with a characteristic mix of wit and industry. For his 98th birthday, he…
- Maurice Podoloff"I was born on either Aug. 18 or Aug. 31," Maurice Podoloff once said, "and it was somewhere in Ukraine, possibly near Odessa." He added that record-keeping in Russia had simply not been reliable in those days. That uncertain beginning…
- Boris PodolskyBoris Podolsky earned one of history's more remarkable endorsements in 1933. Albert Einstein called him "one of the most brilliant of the younger men" to have worked with Paul Dirac. Einstein made that observation in a letter to Abraham…
- Igor SikorskyIgor Sikorsky built a small rubber band-powered helicopter at age 12, long before the world had any reason to believe such machines could carry a person. That boyhood model, assembled in Kiev in the early 1900s, contained the seed of an…