Mikhail Vielgorsky

Count Mikhail Vielgorsky (Polish: Michał Wielhorski, Russian: Михаил Юрьевич Виельгорский); (22 November 1788 – 21 September 1856) was a Russian official and composer of Polish descent. He composed romances, symphonies, an opera and was an amateur singer, violinist, and patron of the arts.

He is considered to be one of the major influences on the musical arts in Russia during the 19th-century because of his salons, responsible with bringing the string quartet to Russia. Along with his brother Matvey Vielgorsky, they were considered the "brothers of harmony" for their intrepid and comprehensive patronage of the musical arts.

Vielgorsky was a friend of Ludwig van Beethoven and an admirer of his music; the Russian premiere of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony took place at Vielgorsky's home in Saint Petersburg in 1836. The same year, Mikhail Glinka rehearsed parts of his new opera A Life for the Tsar at Vielgorsky's home, accompanied by the enserfed orchestra of Prince Yusupov. In the 1830s and 1840s, as Richard Stites notes, Vielgorsky's salon "played host to the most celebrated musical visitors to mid-century Russia: Liszt, Berlioz, the Schumanns, and Pauline Viardot among others... Because of the attendance of Gogol, Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky, Lermontov, Odoevsky, Glinka, Dargomyzhsky, and Bryullov, a contemporary dubbed Vielgorsky's home "a lively and original multifaceted academy of the arts.' Berlioz called it 'a little ministry of fine arts.'"

Vielgorsky presided over his salons donning simple garments and entertaining various different classes of guests, informality considered remarkable for the time.

Read more about this composer on Wikipedia.