Modest Altschuler
Encyclopedia
Modest Altschuler (February 15, 1873September 12, 1963) was a cellist, orchestral conductor, and composer.

He was born in Mogilev
Mogilev
Mogilev is a city in eastern Belarus, about 76 km from the border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and 105 km from the border with Russia's Bryansk Oblast. It has more than 367,788 inhabitants...

, Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory
Moscow Conservatory
The Moscow Conservatory is a higher musical education institution in Moscow, and the second oldest conservatory in Russia after St. Petersburg Conservatory. Along with the St...

 and emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in the late 1890s.

Early in the twentieth century, Altschuler organized the Russian Symphony Orchestra Society of New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, which for two decades toured the United States featuring performances and compositions by leading contemporary Russians. Among the Orchestra's notable premieres were Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

 Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, Op. 10
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Prokofiev)
Sergei Prokofiev set about composing his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, Op. 10 in 1911 and finished it in 1912. A one-movement concerto, it is the shortest of his five complete piano concertos, lasting only around a quarter of an hour.- Structure :...

, which was performed at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 in New York on December 10, 1918 and Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...

's Prelude to Khovanshchina, which Altschuler presented at Carnegie Hall on February 25, 1905. The Orchestra was among the first established orchestral ensembles to record for the gramophone
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...

; Columbia
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

 discs of short pieces by Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...

, Eduard Lassen
Eduard Lassen
Eduard Lassen was a Belgian composer and conductor of Danish birth who spent most of his career working as the music director at the court in Weimar. A moderately prolific composer, Lassen produced music in a variety of genres including operas, symphonic works, piano works, lieder, and choral...

 and others date from about 1910. Nathaniel Shilkret
Nathaniel Shilkret
Nathaniel Shilkret was an American composer, conductor, clarinetist, pianist, business executive, and music director born in New York City, New York to an Austrian immigrant family.-Early career:...

, a member of the Orchestra, notes in his autobiography that soloists in the Orchestra included Mischa Elman, Josef Lhevinne
Josef Lhévinne
Josef Lhévinne was a Russian pianist and piano teacher.Joseph Arkadievich Levin was born into a family of musicians in Oryol and studied at the Imperial Conservatory in Moscow under Vasily Safonov...

, Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

, and Vassily Safanov. Shilkret also noted that the Orchestra "played for the great ballerina Pavlova and her partner Mordkin
Mikhail Mordkin
Mikhail Mordkin graduated from the Bolshoi Ballet School in 1899, and in the same year was appointed ballet master.He joined Diaghilev's ballet in 1909 as a leading dancer. After the first season he remained in Paris to dance with Pavlova...

 [1910]."

Despite his rigorous classical training, Altschuler was not averse to modernist experimentation. The Symphony's March 1915 New York premiere of Skryabin's Promethee: Le Poeme de Feu with Marguerite Volavy as pianist, featured a newly invented device, the chromola, which rendered musical tones in color http://home.tiscali.nl/cretien/pub/synleon99.htm.

After disbanding the orchestra on the eve of the first World War, Altschuler moved to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, where he built a notable reputation as a teacher and performer. With help from his brother, film executive Joe Aller, he composed and performed in film scores, including The Sea Hawk (1924), Dawn to Dawn (1933), It's All in Your mind
It's All In Your Mind
"It's All in Your Mind" is the seventh track on Beck's 2002 album, Sea Change. It is perhaps one of the simplest songs on the album lyrically; many phrases are repeated, with 'I wanted to be' iterated nine times....

(1938), Buffalo Bill Rides Again (1947), and Song of My Heart (1948), He was also active in southern California's musical community. In 1926, he organized the Glendale Symphony Orchestra http://www.alextheatre.org/gso.html.

Altschuler founded a musical dynasty which includes his niece Eleanor Aller
Eleanor Aller
Eleanor Aller was a world-renowned cellist and founding member, with her husband, Felix Slatkin, of the Hollywood String Quartet....

, symphony conductor Leonard Slatkin
Leonard Slatkin
Leonard Edward Slatkin is an American conductor and composer.-Early life and education:Slatkin was born in Los Angeles to a musical family that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father Felix Slatkin was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet,...

, cellist Frederick Zlotkin http://home.tiscali.nl/cretien/pub/synleon99.htm, violinist Judith Aller
Judith Aller
Judith Aller is an American violinist, the daughter of pianist Victor Aller. She was a student of violinist Jascha Heifetz at the University of Southern California. She was married first to a Finn, Ilkka Talvi, living in Helsinki and Pori, and later was married to author Bruce Alexander...

, singer/songwriter Jody Cormack and composer Dylan Mattingly
Dylan Mattingly
Dylan Mattingly, born March 18, 1991 in Oakland, California is an American composer, conductor, cellist, pianist, bassist, guitarist, and singer from Berkeley, California...

. Aller and her husband Felix Slatkin were principals in the Hollywood String Quartet
Hollywood String Quartet
The Hollywood String Quartet was formed in 1939 by violinist and conductor Felix Slatkin and his wife, cellist Eleanor Aller.The original formation of the quartet was rounded out by Joachim Chassman and Paul Robyn. They broke up in 1941 due to Slatkin's entry into the army. The quartet was...

 http://ronpenndorf.com/journalofrecordedmusic4.html http://www.classicalnotes.net/reviews/hollywood.html, one of America's most accomplished classical ensembles in the period 1947-1961.

Modest Altschuler died in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

on September 12, 1963.
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