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Лев Книппер

[b]Lev Knipper[/b] (3 December [i]{O.S. 21 November}[/i], 1898, Tiflis, Russian Empire — 30 July 1974, Moscow, USSR) was a Russian-Soviet composer, conductor, songwriter, and ethnomusicologist, nephew of renowned actress and [a=Anton Chekhov]'s wife, [b][a=Olga Knipper][/b] (1868—1959), and husband of cellist [b][url=https://discogs.com/artist/4509800]Tatiana Gaidamovich[/url][/b] (1918—2005). Once a high-ranking White Army officer, Knipper changed his allegiance after the Russian Civil War and went to the Soviet Union, recruited by NKVD in 1922 and serving as a covert spy for twenty-seven years. One of his best-known works is the song [i]Polyushko-Polye[/i] with [url=https://discogs.com/artist/1401012]Victor Gusev[/url]'s lyrics from his 1934 Symphony No. 4, "[i]Poem about Komsomol Soldier[/i]," Op. 41, which became the staple of traditional Russian song repertoire. Knipper held many prestigious accolades, including two Stalin Prizes of the 2nd degree (1946/49), Order of the Badge of Honour (1959), and People's Artist of the RSFSR (1974). [i]Name variations[/i]: Лев Константинович Книппер, Lev Konstantinovich Knipper, Lev Konstantinovič, קניפר לב, Leo Kniper, Khniper, Knyipper, Knipers. Knipper was born in a family of a Russified German railway engineer in Tiflis (modern-day Tbilisi in Georgia) but grew up in Yekaterinoslav (Dnipro in contemporary Ukraine); by 1913, when he was fifteen, Knippers settled in Saint Petersburg. Lev had two sisters, including Olga (1897—1980), who later married [url=https://discogs.com/artist/3868028]Mikhail Chekhov[/url] (1891—1955), [a=Anton Chekhov]'s nephew, and became a renowned actress. All children were bilingual and spoke fluent German. Lev's favorite paternal aunt, Olga Knipper-Chekhova, encouraged his musical interests, and he studied clarinet, brass instruments, and double bass, learning piano himself from a self-tuition manual. After the 1917 revolution, Lev Knipper enlisted into the Volunteer Army led by General Lavr Kornilov (1870—1918), subsequently promoted to second lieutenant and awarded the Order of St. George. In 1920, he fought in Crimea along "Black Baron" Pyotr Wrangel (1878—1928) until their ultimate defeat and ended up in Constantinople with the rest of the exiled White Army. Knipper felt betrayed by former allies, extremely homesick, and disillusioned in his prior anti-revolutionary stance. In 1922, Lev decided to join the new Soviet Russian Republic and came to Moscow, where he was soon recruited as the foreign intelligence officer by the [i]OGPU[/i] ("Joint State Political Directorate," predecessor of [i]NKVD[/i], "People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs"). In 1922, Lev went to Berlin on his first covert mission, formally to continue musical studies. Knipper met several renowned composers, like [a=Alois Hába], [a=Philipp Jarnach], and [a=Paul Hindemith], who most notably influenced his compositional language. Knipper managed to recruit his sister, Olga Chekhova, who settled in Berlin two years earlier, as a secret informant. Lev Knipper returned to Moscow in 1923 and got an administrative job at [url=https://discogs.com/label/1654959]Gnessin Music School[/url] through [url=https://discogs.com/artist/6243873]Elena Gnesina[/url], his aunt's old friend, to take private lessons with [a=Reinhold Glière] and musicologist Nikolai Zhilyayev (1881—1938). The same year, he debuted as a composer with an orchestral suite, [i]Tales of a Plaster God[/i], Op. 1, inspired by [a=Pavel Tchelitchew]'s Buddha sculptures and well-received by critics and the audience. (Even though musicologist [a=Larry Sitsky] later described it as "harsh and chiseled, somewhat grotesque.") Between 1923 and 1929, Lev Knipper served as the technical secretary of the [b]Association for Contemporary Music[/b] ([b]ACM[/b]), established by [a=Nikolai Roslavetz] to unite avantgarde composers. He resigned two years before ACM was officially condemned and disbanded by the Soviet government for promoting "bourgeois" and "anti-proletariate" music. Knipper gave up modernist tendencies in his music and shifted towards socialist realism. In 1929, [a=Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko] hired Lev as a consultant at [url=https://discogs.com/label/2625883]Moscow Art Theatre[/url], leading to the creation of Knipper's 1930 opera [i]The North Wind[/i], Op. 25, based on [a=Vladimir Kirshon]'s play. Knipper performed extensively as a conductor and was a notable collector of folk music from Turkmenia, Kyrgizia, Tadjikistan, and other Middle Eastern republics; since 1936, he had served as the [i]Theater of Oriental Peoples[/i] musical director.