Tchaikovsky
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Karl Zike

Karl Karlovich Zike (Карл Карлович Зике) was a Russian conductor, teacher and musicologist, born in 1851.

Trained at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Zike was the author of a small number of musical works, but is perhaps best known for his four-hand arrangement of Glinka's opera Ruslan and Liudmila. During the 1880s Karl Zike was conductor of the Russian Musical Society symphony concerts, and professor at the conservatories in Moscow (1881-1882) and Saint Petersburg (1882-1889), where his students included Anton Arenskii. In 1889 he was apponted by Anton Rubinstein as inspector of the provincial branches of the Russian Musical Society.

Zike conducted the premiere of the revised version of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 2 (1881), and the first performance in Saint Petersburg of the opera Evgenii Onegin (1883).

Karl Zike died in 1890.