Mykhailo Mykolaiovych Kolachevskyi (*26 September 1851 - †1907) was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, music and public figure, and lawyer. He was the author of the Ukrainian Symphony (1876), in which he used Ukrainian folk themes, as well as the Requiem, String Quartet, a number of piano pieces, romances, and sacred choirs.
Mykhailo Kolachevsky was born in 1851 in the village of Fedorivka in Mykolaiv region (now Mykolaiv oblast). He spent his childhood years in an environment where folk music was played.
He received his professional musical education at the Leipzig Conservatory, graduating in 1876. The young man studied a few years later than Mykola Lysenko and with the same teachers.
Upon returning to his homeland, Kolachevsky settled in Kremenchuk, where he tried to use his knowledge and skills for the needs of society. In 1890, for a decade, he headed the Kremenchuk Zemstvo administration.
In the village of Rokytne, he had his estate and a park of trees that he brought from around the world. The public figure and composer M. Kolachevskyi lived in this village for almost all of his life, and wrote most of his works.
Mykhailo Kolachevskyi's grave in the village of Rokytne
Mykhailo Kolachevskyi died in 1907. He was buried on his own estate.
His creative work
The part of M. Kolachevsky's creative heritage that has come down to us is small: a string quartet, a piano trio, romances, piano pieces, "Requiem," etc. There are also 19 romances, 4 piano pieces, and the score of the Ukrainian Symphony.
Kolachevsky's most important work is his symphony. Composed as his graduation thesis in 1876, it was performed at his final exam and in a public concert, the program of which consisted of works by the conservatory's graduates. In Ukraine, Kolachevsky's symphony was performed many times by an orchestra conducted by D. Akhsharumov in Poltava, and later in Kharkiv and Kremenchuk. In Soviet times, this work was firmly included in the repertoire of orchestras. It was played on the radio and recorded on a gramophone record; the score was also published.
"Ukrainian Symphony"
The first symphonies of the late eighteenth century testify to the development (albeit insignificant) of the symphonic genre in Ukraine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: "Ukrainian Symphony" by E. Vanzhura, symphonies by Maksym Berezovsky, and D. Bortnyansky's Concert Symphony. In the nineteenth century, Ivan Lozynskyi and Mykhailo Verbytskyi composed their symphonies. In 1869, Mykola Lysenko wrote his first "Youth Symphony". A few years later, M. Kolachevsky's work appeared. There is no doubt that the composer was already familiar with Lysenko's work. Many of Lysenko's romances based on Shevchenko's poems had already been written. Kalachevsky may have known both his "Ukrainian Suite in the Form of Old Dances Based on Folk Songs" for piano and symphony, as they studied composition with the same teacher, Karl Reinecke.
It should be noted that Kolachevsky followed Mykola Lysenko and Russian classical composers in selecting musical themes and principles of their development. And all the themes of the Ukrainian Symphony are based on folk songs. It is characteristic that the composer preserves the genre features of the song, strives to reveal its figurative content more fully through the means of the orchestra, through a large musical form. Undoubtedly, Kalachevsky was also influenced by Western European music, in particular the Symphonies I by German romantic composers F. Mendelssohn and R. Schumann.
