Honored Artist of Armenia
Olga Wagenheim (née Gershkovich) was born on July 22, 1905 in St. Petersburg. She studied at the Institute of Noble Maidens (the educational institution was soon closed), then she entered the Piano Department of the Leningrad Conservatory (Saint Petersburg Conservatory) in the class of N.I. Richter. After graduating in 1929, she came to Yerevan to visit her aunt and stayed for many years, almost all her life. An unforgettable acquaintance with the composer Romanos Melikian, who introduced her to the musical world of Yerevan, made her reconsider her plans for the future and she decided to stay and work in Armenia.
The first concert in Yerevan with the participation of Olga Wagenheim took place on July 29, 1929, at the concert stage of the Twenty-Six Commissars garden. The young singers Tamara Shakhnazaryan and Armenak Ter-Abramyan participated in the concert. They performed some songs by Sayat-Nova and romances by Russian composers.
This concert, in which Olga Wagenheim showed true professionalism, became the beginning of her active accompanist activity for more than fifty years. For Wagenheim, these were years of creative growth. She was invited to work in all musical institutions in Yerevan: The Armenian Philharmonic, the Alexander Spendiaryan National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, and the radio.
She worked for several years at the Yerevan State Conservatory as an accompanist in Nadezhda Kardyan’s solo singing class and Dmitry Lekger’s violin class. However, she soon left this job due to busy concert activities, devoting herself entirely to performing. A
well-known musicologist — a certified specialist of the first graduating class (there were seven students there) of the Musicological Department of the Yerevan Conservatory, Professor Anna Barsamyan, recalling her years of study and the course of musical literature taught by Konstantin Melik-Vrtanesyan, who graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory (Saint Petersburg Conservatory), writes: “In the absence of sound recording means, musical material was illustrated by our favorite Olga Wagenheim.”
Among the soloists (there were more than seventy-five of them), with whom Olga Wagenheim performed in solo concerts and so-called national programs were singers Haykanoush Danielyan, Zara Dolukhanova, Pavel Lisitsian, Nar Hovhannisyan, Gohar Gasparyan, Tatevik Sazandaryan, Shara Talyan, Avak Petrosyan, Armenak Ter-Abramyan, Gohar Galachyan, Yelena Vartanyan, Edvard Bagdasaryan, Lyubov Lazareva, Suren Shahidzhanyan, Seda Kurbanyan, Arthur Aydinyan, violinists Avet Ter-Gabrielyan, Hrachya Bogdanyan, Zoya Petrosyan, cellists Artemi Ayvazyan, Gurgen Adamyan, Koryun Ananyan, Medea Abrahamyan, Yuri Yedigaryan, trumpeter Haykaz Mesiayan, tar player Soghomon Seyranyan, and many others. Among the soloists was also her husband (her second marriage), violinist Fyodor Fyodorov, with whom she lived a long and happy life, traveling all over Armenia and the cities of the USSR.
Olga Wagenheim also accompanied musicians touring in Armenia. Among those musicians were soloists of the Azerbaijan Opera and Ballet Theater after Akhundov Y. Rizaev (1935) and singer Bul-Bul (1944). Concerts of the Moscow Philharmonic string trio took place in 1946. With two musicians of this trio, M. Zatulovsky (violin) and G. Tsomyk (cello), Wagenheim performed a separate concert. She also accompanied the famous violinist Dmitry Sitkovetskya, a singer from Moldova M. Totok (1953), and many other guest performers.
Some concerts of Olga Wagenheim became a bright event in the musical life of Armenia in the distant 1940s. One of those was the concert performance in Yerevan (in 1940) of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s opera “Iolanta», Op. 69, in the Armenian Philharmonic Concert Hall (Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall) with the participation of the State Capella (artistic director Aram Ter-Hovhannisyan) and soloists: P. Lisitsian, A. Ananyan, A. Avakyan, D. Poghosyan,Lazareva, S. Shahidzhanyan, K. Markosyan, and K. Baroyan. The orchestra part was performed in a piano arrangement by Olga Wagenheim and the concert was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Listeners remembered the concert dedicated to the 5th death anniversary of the great Komitas (in 1940), in which Haykanoush Danielyan, the State Capella of Armenia under the direction of Aram Ter-Hovhannisyan and concertmaster Olga Wagenheim participated.
Another remarkable event in the musical life of Yerevan was the first in Armenia performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Requiem» in D minor, K. 626 (in 941) with the participation of the State Capella of Armenia and soloists: L. Lazareva, L. Mamajanyan, A. Avakyan, and D. Poghosyan. The orchestral part of the harmonium was performed by Olga Wagenheim.
Olga Wagenheim participated in the Decades of Armenian Art and Literature in Moscow in 1939 and 1956. We should mention the stock recordings (more than one hundred works), including a large number of first performances with solo vocalists and instrumentalists, performed on Radio Armenia.
In 1953, Olga Nikolaevna Wagenheim was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Armenia.
In the early 1970s, for a short period, Olga Wagenheim taught artistic accompaniment at the Musical-Pedagogical School (now Music College named after Arno Babajanyan).
On July 3, 1985, an evening dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Wagenheim (with the participation of Olga Wagenheim herself) took place at the Armenian House of Artists. Famous singers and instrumentalists took part in the concert. The opening speech was given by Anna Barsamyan. This unforgettable concert can be considered one of the first evenings dedicated to the activities of the accompanist.
In 1995, Olga Wagenheim decided to move to Astrakhan to live with her son Igor. There she passed away.