Leonid Alekseyevich Polovinkin (1894 - 1949)

Leonid Polovinkin was, together with Alexander Mosolov and Gavriil Popov, one of the leaders of Russian modernism, and one of the most performed young composers in the early Twenties. A versatile musician, he experimented with prepared piano well before Cage, composed Marxist remakes (as with Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots redone with a new politically updated apotheosis, under the title The Decembrists), puppet theatre pieces, and much piano music. His flexibility and originality made him a highly sought-after professional by metteurs en scène, such as Alexander Tairov, for whose Kamerny Theatre revue Kukirol he composed his Fox-Trot ‘Ski’, as an overture.

Mauro Piccinini