Kirill Smolkin - Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung - Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Kirill Smolkin is a PhD student at the University of Heidelberg. In 2022, he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in musicology from the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow. He gained professional experience as a research editor and co-author of the online encyclopaedia on Tchaikovsky, a project run by the State Institute for Art Studies (SIAS) in Moscow. His doctoral research, which is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and supervised by Prof. Dr Christoph Flamm, focuses on the reception of Tchaikovsky’s work in late classical music and popular culture. His other research interests include interdisciplinary musicology, film music, the relationship between words and music, and music and politics.

Since August 2026, he has been working as a research assistant at the State Institute for Music Research, where he is involved in the research project ‘Between East Berlin and Moscow: Institutional Relations in Art Music, 1967–1971’.

Essays

‘Tchaikovsky Weaponised: Classical Music and Propaganda in Putin’s Russia’, in: Online Bulletin of the Tchaikovsky Society 2026 (forthcoming).

‘Tchaikovsky’s Pop Scores’, in: Die Tonkunst 19/2 (2025), pp. 163–173.

“Swan Lake Horror”, in: 19th Century Music 48/1–2 (2024), pp. 66–75.

‘“Muzyka sleduet za svetom”: On the concept behind M. K. Čiurlionis’ opera “Jurate”’ [‘Music follows the light’. On M. K. Čiurlionis’ concept for the opera Jūratė], in: Iskusstvo zvuka i sveta. History, Theory, Practice, Issue 1, ed. by Olga Kolganova, St Petersburg 2021, pp. 174–180 (in Russian).

‘Gustav Mahler’s “Songs on the Death of Children” to poems by Friedrich Rückert: A Dialogue between the Poet and the Composer’ [Kindertotenlieder by Gustav Mahler to poems by Friedrich Rückert: Dialogue between the Poet and the Composer], in: Music in the Dialogue of Cultures and Civilisations, ed. by Tatiana Sidneva, Nizhny Novgorod 2021, pp. 287–290 (in Russian).

‘On the issue of performance instructions in Gustav Mahler’s music’, in: Researchby Young Musicologists, Moscow 2020, pp. 444–454 (in Russian).

‘Čiurlionis’s Musical and Pictorial Harmony: A Complex Approach’, in: Lietuvos muzikologija 21 (2020), pp. 160–171.

(with Irina Skvorcova) “Novye stilevye zakonomernosti v romansach op. 38 S. V. Rachmaninova” [The New Stylistic Principles in Rachmaninoff’s Songs, Op. 38], in: Južno-Rossijskij muzykalʹnyj alʹmanach 3 (2020), pp. 50–56 (in Russian).

Reviews

‘Prohibition (does not) whet the appetite: Nureyev at the Berlin State Ballet’, in: Mitteilungen der Tschaikowsky-Gesellschaft 33 (2026) (forthcoming).

‘Not Just Tchaikovsky: The Night Before Christmas by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Bavarian State Opera’, in: Mitteilungen der Tchaikovsky-Gesellschaft 33 (2026) (forthcoming).

Simon Morrison, *Tchaikovsky’s Empire: A New Life of Russia’s Greatest Composer*, New Haven/London: Yale University Press 2024, in: *Die Tonkunst* 19/1 (2025), pp. 99–100.

Encyclopaedia entries

In the online encyclopaedia “Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky” (in Russian):

• ‘Dresden’; ‘Bad Soden’.
• ‘Berlin’; ‘Hamburg’; ‘Hanover’; ‘Frankfurt am Main’; ‘Cologne’; ‘Leipzig’; ‘Lübeck’; ‘Mannheim’; ‘Wiesbaden’ (all co-authored with Polina Vajdman).
• ‘Cantata for the opening of the Polytechnic Exhibition in Moscow 1872’; ‘Cantata “Moscow”’ (both co-authored with Marina Rakhmanova).
• ‘Aachen’; ‘Magdeburg’; ‘Munich’; ‘Nuremberg’ (ed.; author: Polina Vajdman).

In *Russia in the Civil War. 1918–1922: Encyclopaedia in 3 volumes* [Russia in the Civil War. 1918–1922: Encyclopaedia in 3 volumes], ed. by Andrei Sorokin, Moscow: Političeskaja ėnciklopedija, 2021 (in Russian):

• ‘Golovanov, Nikolai Semyonovich’, ‘Kuper, Emil Albertovich’, ‘Kusevitsky, Sergei Alexandrovich’, ‘Nezhdanova, Antonina Vasilievna’, ‘Suk, Vyacheslav Ivanovich’.