Oleksii Antonovych Kolakóvskyi (29 June 1856, Podillia - † 28 September 1912, St Petersburg) was a violinist and teacher.
A brief biography
He came from the family of an artist and amateur violinist, and studied with his father.
In 1872-1873, he performed as a soloist with the Kyiv Opera Orchestra.
In 1873, he graduated from the Kyiv Music School of the Russian Musical Society, where he studied violin with Ivan Vodolsky. In the same year, he gave his first concert in Kyiv.
In 1877, he graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory with a gold medal - in the class of Leopold Auer.
In 1884-1897 he was a soloist at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
In 1897, he was forced to leave the theatre due to eye disease. In 1897-1906, he worked as a teacher at the Kyiv Music School, and in 1906-1912 - at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In 1905-1906, he also taught at the Kyiv private music school of Mykola Tutkovsky and at his own school.
He also worked as concertmaster of the Benjamin Bilze Orchestra in Berlin.
His solo concerts took place in Kyiv in 1873, 1889, 1901, in Odesa in 1877, in Moscow in 1891, and in St. Petersburg. He performed abroad in Vienna, Berlin, and London.
He was considered one of the world's best violinists of the last quarter of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
He performed works by L. van Beethoven, M. Bruch, G. Wieniawski, G. Verdi, N. Paganini, C. Saint-Saëns, F. Chopin, and P. Tchaikovsky.
