During the 1859–60 season, the famous pianist A. Dreishok came to Kharkiv to give several concerts.
Princess Elena Yuryevna Khvoshchinskaya (née Golitsyna) wrote the following in her memoirs:
My mother told me that on the fifth day after their wedding, there was a concert in Kharkiv by Draychok, a pianist well-known at the time, and my father, returning from there thrilled by everything he had heard, sat down at the piano and played everything he had heard by ear until 8 a.m….
But while the newlywed, Prince Golitsyn, played the piano selflessly until 8 a.m., another great star lit up the Kharkiv sky. For it was precisely these concerts by A. Dreishok that proved decisive for the young Ilya Ilyich Slatin in his desire to devote himself to a career in music.
In a biographical sketch about Ilya Slatin, published in the March 1896 issue of *Russkaya Muzykalnaya Gazeta*, we find the following:
…Ilya Ilyich Slatin, the son of a hereditary honorary citizen, was born on July 7, 1845, in Belgorod (Kursk Governorate). His love for music became apparent as early as childhood: at the age of nine, he began taking piano lessons from the only teacher in that small town—a freed peasant woman who played the viola in the orchestra of a wealthy landowner. He then continued his musical studies in Kharkiv, where his parents took him to enroll in Slivitsky’s private boarding school for the nobility. His music studies continued there, but all nine years—that is, until he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory—were almost entirely wasted in terms of musical education, whereas the necessary knowledge could have been acquired in two or three years under a competent teacher. During the 1859–60 season, the famous pianist A. Dreishok came to Kharkiv to give several concerts. These concerts and A. Dreishok’s personality provided the final impetus for I.I. Slatin to devote himself to a musical career.
So, the most exciting chapter in the life of Kharkiv’s great future pianist, conductor, teacher, and musical figure was just beginning…
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