| Biography | Igor Markevitch ( Ihor Markevych; July 27, 1912 March 7, 1983) was a Ukrainian-born composer and conductor who also became an Italian and French citizen.
Igor Markevitch was born in Kiev, Ukraine, a part of Russian Empire, to an old family of Ukrainian Cossack starshyna ennobled in the 18th century. A son of the pianist Boris Markevitch and Zoia Pokitonova, Markevitch moved with his family to Paris in 1914 and Switzerland in 1916. Alfred Cortot discovered his musical ability and advised him to go to Paris in 1926 for training as a composer and pianist at the École Normale, where he studied under Cortot and Nadia Boulanger.
Markevitch gained recognition in 1929 when he was discovered by Serge Diaghilev, who commissioned a Piano Concerto from Markevitch and desired him to collaborate on a ballet with Boris Kochno. In a letter to the London Times Diaghilev hailed Markevitch as the man who would put an end to 'a scandalous period of music ... of cynical-sentimental simplicity'. The ballet project came to an end with Diaghilev's death on 19 August 1929, but Markevitch's works were accepted by the publisher Schott and he continued to produce at least one major work per year during the 1930s, being rated among the leading contemporary composers. He started being hailed as "the second Igor" the first Igor being Igor Stravinsky.
Markevitch made his debut as a conductor at age 18 with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; after leading the Dutch premiere of Rébus he took some conducting lessons with Pierre Monteux and Hermann Scherchen. As a conductor, he was well respected for his interpretations of the French and Russian repertory and of twentieth-century music. He settled in Italy. During the Second World War he was active with the partisan movement. In 1947 he married and settled in Switzerland. His musical career as a conductor brought him all over the world. He was permanent conductor of the Orchestre Lamoureux in Paris, and in 1965 he worked for the Spanish RTVE Orchestra. He was also the permanent conductor of the Monte Carlo orchestra.
In 1970, after ignoring his own compositions for nearly 30 years, he conducted often his own music and thereafter a slow revival of his original works began. He died suddenly from a heart attack in Antibes on March 7, 1983.
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