Winkler, Alexandre

Preface

Alexander Adolfovich Winkler – En Bretagne Op. 13

(b. Kharkiv. March 3, 1865 – d. Besançon, August 6, 1935)

Fantasy overture on 3 Breton songs for orchestra

Preface
Composed after 1906 (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of J.S. Bach, Op. 12) but before 1909 (String Quartet No. 3, Op. 14), Alexander Winkler’s Op. 13 (En Bretagne, Fantasy overture on 3 Breton songs for orchestra) typified the nature of post-19th century conservatory sophistication. Although not well-known today, Winkler was an extremely proficient and dedicated composer, pianist, and pedagogue, most notably Alexander Prokofiev’s piano teacher at St. Petersburg Conservatory from 1905 to 1909, whose meticulousness supercharged the young neo-classicist wanting technique at the time. So important was Winkler upon the composer that his Op. 2 (Four Etudes) was dedicated to him. In his diary in 1909 he wrote about the composition, “But the memory of Winkler is still sacred. And in memory of the good old years, I composed four piano etudes especially for him in the summer”.1 Others like professor and colleague Alexander Glazunov also dedicated works to him, his Op. 101 (4 Preludes and Fugues) bearing, “to my friend” (moemu drugu).

The legacy of Winkler’s influence on Russian music may be small but it is no less interesting and well-connected within the climate of 20th century academization of classical music after the Slavophile compositional group colloquially known as the ‘Mighty Handful’ (Moguchaya Kuchka). Born in 1865 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in a non-musical family, a father busy at the Moscow Insurance Company and a mother occupied with language teaching, Winkler’s musical beginnings were not as developed as others of his time. Nevertheless, at the age of 21 he graduated from the Kharkiv Music School, the city where notable composers like Isaak Dunayevsky, Hryhorii Skovoroda, and Alexander Siloti were born. He left the musical world, if only formally, and went into law at Kharkov Imperial University, inevitably due to familial pressures for a ‘real’ job, but attended classes at the Kharkiv branch of the Imperial Russian Music Society (RMS) founded by Anton Rubenstein in 1859, also in the piano class of Ilya Slatin. Nevertheless, after graduating in 1887 he left for France where he reignited his piano studies under Victor Alphonse Duvernoy whose career resembled Winkler’s future path. …

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