Koussevitzky, Concerto for Bass

Last week we featured a bass concerto by Wanhal, and I want to stick with the theme of works for double bass just a little while.

As a child, the Russian-born Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951) studied violin, cello, piano, and trumpet. But at 14, he entered the conservatory as a student of music theory and the double bass. At the age of 20, he joined the Bolshoi orchestra and became its principal bassist in 1901. He wrote this concerto in 1902 and performed the premiere in Berlin in 1905.

His second marriage in 1905 into a very wealthy family left him financially secure. He formed a publishing company that acquired works of Scriabin, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Stravinsky. He began studying conducting and hired the Berlin Philharmonic to make his conducting debut in 1908.

Koussevitzky enjoyed a successful conducting career in Russia, Berlin, and Paris before eventually becoming the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1924. He led that orchestra to national prominence and was instrumental in founding its summer Tanglewood Festival.

He was also a champion of new music, and it is in that context that we made mention of him several times in our latest Composer of the Month page on Béla Bartók. It was Koussevitzky who commission Bartók’s best-known work, the Concerto for Orchestra.