Lev Marquis, a Dutch conductor who emigrated from the USSR, died

Lev Marquis, a Dutch conductor and violinist born in the USSR, died at the age of 93. He is one of the founders of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, as a conductor many works by Alfred Schnittke and other contemporary authors were recorded for the first time.

Marquis was born in Moscow, graduated from the string department of the Music School at the Moscow Conservatory, studied at the Gnesiny State Music and Pedagogical Institute with Yuri Yankelevich and Maria Yudyna. He successfully toured in the USSR and abroad, first as a member of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, and then of the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic, participated in the recordings of classical music albums. In 1981 he emigrated.

“Of course, I was disgusted by a lot of things, the Czech events, the Hungarian events. So I can’t say that I was a Soviet person. But I wasn’t an active dissident either,” he said in an interview with Radio Liberty. Since 1981, Marquis lived in the Netherlands, where in 1988 he became the leader of the Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra. Since 1997, he has been the chief conductor of the Geneva Chamber Orchestra, conducted in France, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Israel and Singapore. Taught and helped classical musicians in post-Soviet countries.

Marquis commented on social and political events in Russia, criticized Russian colleagues who spoke in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

“When a person sells himself for a well-known kind of good, and the attitude of the highest officials towards himself, his orchestra, the theater is a compromise that does not come in vain. People begin to do what they want,” he said in an interview. “I am fully aware and I appreciate their talent, I appreciate their professionalism, but I am alien to their musical manifestations, which, from my point of view, have the most destructive effect on them as true musicians.”