Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nixa.

English record company. It was formed in 1950 by Hilton Nixon, a New Zealand businessman. Initial releases were 78 r.p.m. records of popular music from the Paris-based Pacific company, but a recording of two Scarlatti sonatas, played in the Tausig arrangement by Monique de la Bruchollerie, and some choral items sung by Les Chanteurs de St Eustache were also released. In 1951 Nixa started to release Pacific recordings on LPs and classical material from US companies such as Bach Guild, Concert Hall Society, the Haydn Society, Lyrichord, Period, Polymusic, Renaissance and Urania. In late 1952 the first original Nixa recordings were made and these, two Vivaldi concertos for viola d’amore with Harry Danks and the London Ensemble, and Haydn’s symphonies nos.49 and 73 conducted by Harry Newstone, were released in 1953. A joint arrangement with the Westminster label produced outstanding recordings of Holst’s The Planets, Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast and Vaughan Williams’s orchestral pieces, all conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, as well as recordings conducted by Hermann Scherchen and Artur Rodzinski. In 1956 Nixa was taken over by Pye Radio, becoming the Pye Record Company.

JOHN SNASHALL

Nixon, Marni [McEathron, Margaret Nixon]

(b Altadena, CA, 22 Feb 1930). American soprano. After studying singing and opera with Carl Ebert, Jan Popper, Boris Goldovsky and Sarah Caldwell, she embarked on a varied career, involving film and musical comedy as well as opera and concerts. She has appeared extensively on American television, dubbed the singing voices of film actresses in The King and I, West Side Story and My Fair Lady, and acted in several commercial stage ventures. Her light, flexible, wide-ranging soprano and uncanny accuracy and musicianship have made her valuable in more classical ventures, and have contributed to her success in works by Webern, Stravinsky, Ives, Hindemith and Goehr, many of which she has recorded. Her opera repertory includes Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos), Mozart’s Susanna, Blonde and Constanze, Violetta, La Périchole and Philine (Mignon), performed at Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and Tanglewood. In addition to giving recitals, she has appeared with orchestras in New York (under Bernstein), Los Angeles, Cleveland, Toronto, London and Israel. She has taught at the California Institute of Arts (1969–71) and joined the faculty of the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, in 1980.

MARTIN BERNHEIMER/R

Nizhinsky, Vaclav [Vatslav Fomich]

(b Kiev, 5/17 Dec 1889; d London, 8 April 1950). Russian dancer and choreographer. See Ballet, §3(i).

Nizhniy Novgorod.

Russian city. It is the largest city in Russia after Moscow and St Petersburg. In remote times music there was represented by folksongs, especially those of the barge haulers, bellringing and chant, and old chant traditions were preserved by the Old Believers, who were especially strong in the area. Between 1811 and 1853 productions at the Shakhovskiy theatre marked the beginning of public opera, ballet, drama and musical theatre in the city, and there were concerts in the houses of noblemen and intellectuals. The home of Aleksandr Dmitriyevich Ulïbïshev – writer, music critic and author of the first biography of Mozart published in Russia – was particularly celebrated: the Nizhniy Novgorod Music Society occupies his house on Provyantskaya Ulitsa. Balakirev, who spent his childhood and adolescence in the city, attended Ulïbïshev’s soirées and maintained links with the place after his move to St Petersburg.

In 1873 a branch of the Russian Music Society was opened on the initiative of Nikolay Rubinstein; it arranged ten symphony concerts each year as well as evenings of chamber music. The development of the city’s cultural life, including concerts and theatre productions, relied to a large extent on the annual fairs, which became more active in the late 19th century as a result of the growth in industry and trade. For the opening of the All-Russian Exhibition of Arts and Industry, in the summer of 1896, a new theatre was constructed. The opera troupe of Savva Mamontov came on tour to this theatre, and Chaliapin sang there. D.A. Slavyansky’s choir, the Vladimir buglers and a symphony orchestra under the direction of Voytsekh Glavach also took part in the fair concerts. Glavach played the organ too: in the summer of 1896 a Walker organ was installed for one season in the concert hall as a fair exhibit. In the period 1900 to 1910 the orchestra of the Moscow Conservatory came on tour under the direction of Vasily Safonov and Koussevitzky’s orchestra performed Skryabin’s Piano Concerto (with the composer as soloist) during a summer tour along the Volga. Among choirs, that founded by the merchant and patron of the arts, V. Rukavishnikov, and directed by N.I. Sokolov, was well known in the 1880s, and later the A.A. Krivaus and the I.N. Kazantsev choirs became noted. In music education the most important improvement came in the 1870s, when music classes were opened at the local branch of the Russian Music Society (later transformed into a music school). For almost half a century the classes were headed by the composer and conductor Vasiliy Yul'yevich Villoing, whose students included Lyapunov. There were also a few private music schools, the most influential of which in the early years of the 20th century was that of V.M. Tsaregradsky.

After 1917 cultural life changed in accord with Soviet policy. The fair was abolished, the churches destroyed, and as a consequence the traditions of choral singing disappeared. In 1932 the city was renamed Gor'kiy, after the writer born there. During the 1930s permanent state music institutions were organized: the opera house (1935) and a Philharmonia (1937), under whose auspices a symphony orchestra was created, with S.L. Lazerson as its permanent director. The opera house included in its repertory the works of Aleksandr Kas'yanov, a follower of Balakirev who was the founder of the local school of composition. A boys’ choir began life in 1946 and was later headed by L.K. Sivukhin. At this time too a conservatory was set up (an organ was fitted in the concert hall in 1960), and a branch of the Union of Composers was established in 1951 (it later became the Upper Volga regional organization), its members including Kas'yanov and Nesterov.

The Khrushchyov thaw greatly enlivened the musical life of the city; a series of Sovremennaya Muzïka (Contemporary Music) festivals was organized with the help of Rostropovich and I. Gusman, who for many years directed the Philharmonia orchestra. The festival devoted to Shostakovich in 1964 was an especially important event, when works that had been proscribed during the Stalinist period were played. The city became known as a centre for contemporary music: the première of Schnittke’s First Symphony took place there as did a Schnittke festival at the end of the 1980s. But development was limited by the fact that the city was closed to foreigners in the mid-1960s. Not until 1991 was it reopened, at which time the city and its streets regained their historical names and the fair was reinstituted. In the 1990s the most notable cultural events were the international festivals symbolically named Russkoye Iskusstvo i Mir (Russian Art and the World).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P.I. Mel'nikov-Pechersky: ‘Muzïkal'nïye vechera v Nizhnem’ [Musical soirées in Nizhniy], Mosvityanin, iv/8 (1841)

N. Khramtsovsky: Kratkiy ocherk istorii i opisaniye Nizhnego [Brief history and description of Nizhniy Novgorod] (Nizhniy Novgorod, 1857–9)

A.S. Gatsissky: Nizhegorodskiy teatr (Nizhniy Novgorod, 1867)

M. Gor'ky: ‘S Vserossiyskoy vïstavki 1896’ [From the All-Russian exhibition of 1896], Sobraniye sochinenii [Collected works], xxiii (Moscow, 1953)

V. Kollar: Muzïkal'naya zhizn' Nizhnego Novgoroda: goroda Gor'kogo [The musical life of Nizhniy Novgorod: the town of Gor'kiy] (Gor'kiy, 1976)

B. Belyakov, V. Blinova and N. Bordyug: Opernaya i konsertnaya deyatel'nost' v Nizhnem Novgorode: gorode Gor'kom [Opera and concerts in Nizhniy Novgorod: the town of Gor'kiy] (Gor'kiy, 1980)

I. Yeliseyev: Na muzïkal'noy stsene [On the musical stage] (Gor'kiy, 1990)

Nizhegorodskiy zhurnal [The Nizhniy Novgorod journal] (1996), no.2

TAMARA NIKOLAYEVNA LEVAYA