Reinhold Moritzovich Gliere (1875 – 1956) was born in Kiev, the son of a clarinet maker and became an accomplished violinist while he was still a child. His father’s house was a favorite rendezvous for musicians. The boy was never without an audience when he wished to play an early composition. At age sixteen he went to the Kiev School of Music for three years and then entered the Moscow Conservatory.
Gliere’s earliest works were chiefly chamber music. These, with his First Symphony and the early Romanzas reveal clearly his ties with the great traditions of Russian musical culture. They are all colorful works, emotional and profound, enriched with pleasing melodies and unconstrained rhythms.
He graduated with a one-act opera Earth and Heaven (after Byron), and accepted a teaching post at the Gnessin School of Music in Moscow. Soon, he produced his Second Symphony, as well as various other orchestral works.
In 1907 he went to Berlin for a year to study conducting with Oscar Fried, and from that time became increasingly popular a conductor of symphonic works.
His Third Symphony,Ilya Murometz was published in 1911. This monumental work earned him worldwide renown. In America it became a favorite item in the extensive repertoire of Leopold Stokowski.
From 1913 to 1920 he was the Director of the Kiev Conservatoire, then he was “inspired” (read, “ordered”) by the Nationalist Policy of the Soviet Government to make a prolonged study of the folklore and folk music of Azerbaijan. Deciding to write an Azerbaijanian opera, he chose the sixteenth-century fable of the beautiful Shah-Senen and of her lover Ashug Kerib. The opera, Shah Senen, was completed in 1925. It was the first Soviet grand opera to be heard in the theaters of the republic. It was not performed in Moscow until 1938, when it was the piece de resistance at the great Festival of Azerbaijanian Art.
A similar period of research in Uzbekistan produced the musical drama Gulsara, and some years later the opera Leili and Medjnum. For the choreographic poem Zaporozhstsy, he drew upon the national music of the Ukraine . His other works of musical importance are his ballet, The Red Poppy; the symphonic overture Friendship of Peoples (written for the fifth anniversary of the Stalin Constitution); the fine opera, Rachel (based on Guy de Maupassant’s story Mademoiselle Fifi and depicting the French people’s hatred of the German invaders in the Franco-Prussian War); and the Triumphal Overture Victory, written in 1944 and based on Russian, English and American folksongs. He died in Moscow in 1956.
Although many of his compositions reflect various USSR regions, they all bear the stamp of his own particular style of craftsmanship. Their popularity is probably due to his great understanding of the people’s taste in music.
Glière’s best-known works are his highly rated concerto for harp, the above-mentioned last three symphonies (Ilya Mourometz, 1909-11) and the “Dance of the Russian Sailors” from his ballet The Red Poppy (1927). He is also known as the “Father of Soviet Composers,” as many, including Prokofiev and Khachaturian, studied under him.