Early career Koussevitzky was born into a Jewish family of professional musicians in
Vyshny Volochyok,
Tver Governorate, about northwest of
Moscow, Russia. His parents taught him violin, cello, and piano. He also learned trumpet. At the age of fourteen, he received a scholarship to the
Musico-Dramatic Institute of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, where he studied
double bass with
Rambusek he later won critical acclaim with his first recital in Berlin in 1903. In 1902, he married the dancer
Nadezhda Galat. The same year, with
Reinhold Glière's help, he wrote a popular concerto for the double bass, which he premiered in Moscow in 1905. He soon resigned from the Bolshoi, and the couple moved to Berlin, where Serge studied conducting under
Arthur Nikisch, using his wife's wealth to pay off his teacher's gambling debts.
Conductor and publisher In Berlin he continued to give double bass recitals and, after two years practising conducting in his own home with a student orchestra, he hired the
Berlin Philharmonic and made his professional début as a conductor in 1908. The concert included
Sergei Rachmaninoff's
Piano Concerto No. 2, with the composer at the piano. The next year he and his wife returned to Russia, where he founded his own orchestra in Moscow and branched out into the publishing business, forming his own firm,
Éditions Russes de Musique, and buying the catalogues of many of the greatest composers of the age. Among the composers published by Koussevitzky were Rachmaninoff,
Alexander Scriabin,
Sergei Prokofiev,
Igor Stravinsky, and
Nikolai Medtner.
Personal life Koussevitzky's first wife was
Bolshoi ballet dancer Nadezhda Galat, whom he married at an unknown date probably before 1903; he divorced her in 1905 and married Natalya (Natalie) Ushkov on 8 September of that year. Koussevitzky's second wife Natalie died in 1942, and he created the
Koussevitzky Music Foundations in her honor. In late 1947, he married
Olga Naumova (1901–1978), Natalie's niece. Naumova had lived with the couple and acted as their secretary for 18 years. Olga Naumova was the daughter of the distinguished politician and civil servant
Aleksandr Naumov (1868, Simbirsk – 1950, Nice, France) who served as Minister of Agriculture in the Russian Imperial Cabinet. She has been described as quiet and soft-spoken, and Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland counted her among their close friends. His nephew, Faviy Adolfovich Koussevitzky, known professionally as
Fabien Sevitzky, was music director of the
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1937 until 1955. Sevitzky changed his surname in order to mitigate accusations of nepotism against him. Koussevitzky died in Boston in 1951 and was buried alongside his wife Natalie at the
Church on the Hill Cemetery in Lenox. His pet is buried at the
Pine Ridge Pet Cemetery in Dedham. ==Champion of contemporary music==