Maliszewski, Witold

Witold Malichewsky – Symphony No. 3, Op. 14 in C minor

(b. Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine, 20 July 1873 – d. Zalesie, Poland, near Warsaw, 18 July 1939)

I. Allegro non troppo, p.3
II. Adagio misterioso—Andante molto espressivo, p.50
III. Thème et variations, p.66
IV. Finale. Allegro giocoso—Vivo, p.100

Preface
According to the Ukrainian pedagogue Mykola Ohrenych, “we have all grounds to regard Malichewsky as the founder of the Odesa composing school.” Yet Witold Malichewsky’s contributions reached far beyond the city limits of Odesa. Like many of Eastern Europe’s creative minds, the composer traversed national boundaries, both geographically and stylistically, for the duration of his career. Malichewsky’s oeuvre includes four symphonies, works for the stage (including ballet and opera), concertos, chamber music, pieces for solo piano, and choral religious works, and ranges in style from an early period of Russian neo-Romanticism to later works heavily marked by Polish folk music. Malichewsky also studied and worked in musical centers that, while they were part of Imperial Russia in his youth, are now located in Georgia and Ukraine and have always been marked by unique ethnic identities.

Malichewsky was born in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine, on the border with Moldova. As a teenager, the composer studied with Mikhail Ipolitov-Ivanov at the school of the Imperial Music Society in Tbilisi, Georgia, before going to St. Petersburg for his secondary education. After studying mathematics at the university between 1891 and 1892, and medicine at the Military Medical Academy from 1893 to 1897, he enrolled in the music conservatory in St. Petersburg as a piano and composition student. Malichewsky’s teachers included Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a member of the Russian school of composition known as the “Mighty Handful,” and Alexander Glazunov, for whom he wrote his Ouverture Joyeuse in 1910. His education in St. Petersburg stood him in good stead and his early compositions were well-received. In 1902, he received a prize at the Prince K. Lubomirski Composition Competition for his Ten Pieces for Piano. He also received three composition awards from the Petersburg Chamber Music Society, one each year between 1903 and 1905. …

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