Nikolai Dmitriev

Nikolai Dmitrievich Dmitriev was a Russian musician, composer, pianist, conductor, and music pedagogue. Born into a petty bourgeois family in Moscow, he received a comprehensive home education, including musical training, and was fluent in several foreign languages. By the age of fifteen, he passed his exams externally at the Tambov Gymnasium and secured a position as a private tutor. He studied piano under the renowned teacher Alexander Villoing.

Dmitriev began giving concerts in Moscow during the 1840s and toured various cities across Russia in the 1850s. He frequently appeared at charity concerts as both a pianist and conductor in locations such as Vyatka, Taganrog, Mariupol, Kazan, and Ryazan. From the second half of the 1850s, he balanced his musical pursuits with a career in the civil service, specifically within the judicial department.

In 1857, Dmitriev settled in Kharkov, where he performed and taught piano; notably, the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko was among his students. He also organized quartet evenings in the city in 1861. His civil service career later took him to the Ryazan governor's chancellery in 1863 and to Kazan in the early 1870s.

In 1874, he was appointed as an official at the Vyatka District Court, serving there for 11 years. During his time in Vyatka, he was one of the initiators of a local music circle organized in 1882. Due to illness, he was transferred in 1885 to Taganrog, where he resided until his death in 1893.

As a composer, Dmitriev wrote one unfinished symphony, various piano pieces, and approximately 100 romances, about half of which were published. His romance "The Pine" ("In the wild North..."), set to the poetry of Mikhail Lermontov and dedicated to the singer A. M. Dodonov, has retained its popularity to the present day. Another well-known work is the romance "Under the fragrant branch of lilac."

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