Jacobo Kostakowsky — violinist, composer and conductor with roots in the Russian Empire
Jacobo Kostakowsky was born on 24 January 1893 in Odessa, in the Russian Empire, now in Ukraine, into a Jewish family. A violinist, he left Ukraine with his wife, Ana Fabricant, shortly before the First World War, part of the departure of Jews from the Empire in those years, and settled in Germany. He continued his musical training and professional career in the musical centres of Western Europe, among them Vienna, Paris, Munich, Leipzig and Berlin. The couple's elder daughter, Olga, was born in Leipzig in 1913, and their younger daughter, Lya, in Berlin around 1920.
In September 1925 the family sailed for Mexico aboard the Espagne. Kostakowsky arrived without speaking Spanish, and at first relied on interpreters and helpers; he made his way in the musical life of Mexico City as a violinist in recitals and orchestras, as a teacher and as a conductor. The musicologist Olga Picún, who has studied his archive, places him within the transformation of Mexican music in the 1930s, when he worked alongside the leading figures of the period, and notes his links with Mexican writers and artists.
As a composer he moved, after his arrival, into a new and definitive phase of his work, in which he drew on Mexican subjects and material. His best-known works include the symphonic suite La fiesta de San Miguel de Allende and the sinfonietta Taxco, as well as violin pieces such as Hebräische Melodie and songs on poems by Amado Nervo, Salvador Díaz Mirón, Luis Cardoza y Aragón and the Belarusian poet Maxim Tank. Programme notes of the UNAM Philharmonic have described him as a violinist, composer and conductor who enriched Mexico's musical life.
Both his daughters became part of Mexican culture. Olga, who signed herself Olga Costa, became one of the country's best-known painters, and Lya, a writer and translator, married the Guatemalan poet and critic Luis Cardoza y Aragón. Kostakowsky died in Mexico City on 16 August 1953, aged sixty. His musical archive was catalogued and published by the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 2003, and his works have since returned to Mexican concert programmes.
"Left Russia before the First World War for Germany — Leipzig, then Berlin — and in September 1925 sailed for Mexico, where he spent the rest of his life."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Odessa, Kherson Governorate (now Ukraine)
Born in Odessa, in the Russian Empire, on 24 January 1893, he left Ukraine with his wife, Ana Fabricant, shortly before the First World War and built his early career in Germany before emigrating to Mexico.
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Odessa, Kherson Governorate (now Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.