Jurgenson, Pyotr (Ivanovich)
Jurgenson, Pyotr (Ivanovich)
Jurgenson, Pyotr (Ivanovich), Russian music publisher; b. Reval, July 17, 1836; d. Moscow, Jan. 2, 1904. The youngest son of indigent parents, he learned the music trade with M. Bernard, owner of a music store in St. Petersburg. He served in three other music-selling houses there, before opening a business of his own in 1861, in Moscow. With a small investment, he gradually expanded his firm until it became one of the largest in Russia. Through N. Rubinstein he met the leading musicians of Russia, and had enough shrewdness of judgment to undertake the publication of works of Tchaikovsky, beginning with his op. 1. He became Tchaikovsky’s close friend, and, while making a handsome profit out of his music, he demonstrated a generous regard for his welfare. He published full scores of Tchaikovsky’s syms. and operas, as well as his songs and piano works. His voluminous correspondence with Tchaikovsky was published in a modern edition (2 vols., Moscow, 1938 and 1952). He also published many works by other Russian composers, and published the first Russian editions of the collected works of Chopin, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, and the scores of Wagner’s operas. His catalog contained some 20, 000 numbers. After his death, his sons Boris and Grigory Jurgenson succeeded to the business; it was nationalized after the Russian Revolution.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire