Sergei Bortkiewicz

Sergei Bortkiewicz was a Ukrainian-Russian-German composer, conductor and pianist. Born in what is now Ukraine as Serhiy Eduardovych Bortkevych, he studied law and music in St. Petersburg from 1896, and music in Leipzig from 1900. Until the outbreak of World War I, he lived in Berlin, from where he undertook concert tours throughout Europe and temporarily taught at a conservatory. During this time, he also began his career as a composer. Bortkiewicz returned to Russia in 1914 and lived on his estate near Charkiv. After the October Revolution, he fled to Istanbul via Sebastopol in 1920 and went to Vienna in 1922, where he became a “Federal citizen” a few years later. From 1928 he lived in Berlin again, but returned to Vienna after Hitler came to power in 1933. There, he lived until his death and was buried in a grave of honor on the Central Cemetery.

Bortkiewicz composed an opera, two symphonies, cello, violin and piano concertos, orchestral and chamber music and numerous piano pieces. He saw himself as a romantic in the footsteps of Chopin and Liszt and influenced by Russian composers rejecting modern atonal music. Bortkiewicz also translated the correspondence between Peter Tchaikovsky and his patron Nadeschda von Meck into German, which was published as a book in 1938.

In 1948, Bortkiewiecz won the preliminary round in Austria for the Olympic art competitions with his composition “Olympic Scherzo” for orchestra. The work bears no opus number and has never been published. The manuscript is considered lost. It could be a rearrangement of the “Festive Fanfare” from 1928.