Alexander Goldenweiser

Alexander Borisovich Goldenweiser (1875–1961) was a Russian and Soviet pianist, composer, teacher, publicist, music critic, and public figure. He received the degree of Doctor of Art History (1940), was named People’s Artist of the USSR (1946), and won the Stalin Prize, 1st class (1947) for his concert and performing activity.

He was born on 26 February [10 March] 1875 in Kishinev (then Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire) into the family of the attorney Boris Solomonovich Goldenweiser. His earliest musical impressions came from his mother, Varvara Petrovna Goldenweiser, who sang and played the piano; at age five he learned to read music with the help of his older sister Tatyana and began playing on his own. When he was eight, the family moved to Moscow, where he began serious studies with V. P. Prokunin, a collector of Russian folk songs and a student of Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

In 1889 Goldenweiser entered the Moscow Conservatory, studying piano (first with Alexander Siloti, later graduating in 1895 in the piano class of Paul Pabst) and composition (graduating in 1897 in the class of Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov). He also studied composition with Anton Arensky and counterpoint with Sergei Taneyev (1892–1893). By around 1900 he was already well known, and the writer Andrei Bely mentioned him in the poem “First Rendezvous,” depicting his confident piano playing.

He began teaching in 1895 and worked in several Moscow institutions between 1895 and 1917, including the Nikolaev Orphan Institute and the Elisavetinsky and Catherine women’s institutes; he also taught at the Musical-Dramatic School of the Moscow Philharmonic Society (1904–1906), as well as on workers’ courses and in the People’s Conservatory. From 1906 to 1961 he was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory (piano), serving as head of the piano department from 1936 to 1959 and holding major administrative posts, including assistant director (1918–1919), deputy director (1919–1922; 1932–1934), and director/rector (1922–1924; 1939–1942). In 1931 he organized a “Special Children’s Group” at the conservatory and from 1936 to 1941 he was artistic director of the Central Music School attached to it.

Goldenweiser concertized as a soloist and chamber musician until 1956. He performed in the Moscow Trio in 1907, replacing pianist D. S. Shor, and later played with leading artists including Eugène Ysaÿe, David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Sviatoslav Knushevitsky, and the Beethoven Quartet. From 1901 he was also active as a music critic in periodicals such as the newspaper “Courier” and the journal “Musical World,” wrote under several pseudonyms, and pursued educational outreach through the press and editorial work.

Ideologically he was close to Leo Tolstoy; their friendship began in 1896 through a shared interest in chess. A Tolstoyan in outlook, he abstained from meat, was present at Tolstoy’s death in Astapovo, and signed the writer’s will. During World War II he was evacuated first to Nalchik, then to Tbilisi and Tashkent, returning to Moscow in 1943. In the late-1940s cultural climate he publicly defended traditional musical values and emphasized links between art and folk sources.

He died on 26 November 1961 (some sources give 27 November) in Nikolina Gora (near Moscow) and was buried at Vagankovo Cemetery. The 1973 Musical Encyclopedia described him as the creator of one of the largest Soviet piano schools and an active participant in reforming music education and developing the USSR’s training system for professional musicians. Among his many pupils were Samuil Feinberg, Tatiana Nikolaeva, Rosa Tamarkina, Grigory Ginzburg, Dmitry Kabalevsky, Dmitry Bashkirov, Lazar Berman, and many others (over 200 students are noted).

As a composer he wrote operas including “A Feast in Time of Plague” (after Pushkin, 1942), “The Singers” (after Turgenev, 1942–1943), and “Spring Torrents” (after Turgenev, 1946–1947), as well as the cantata “Light of October” (1948). His instrumental works include an overture after Dante, two Russian suites (1946), a string quartet (1896; revised 1940), “Trio in Memory of S. V. Rachmaninoff” (1953), and numerous piano pieces (including sets from the 1890s, collections from 1930–1933, “From Children’s Life” (1954), a Polyphonic Sonatina (1954), and a Sonata-Fantasy (1959)). He also composed songs and romances, edited piano works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and others, and authored many critical articles and books, notably extensive memoirs about Tolstoy and writings on musical performance and education.

His legacy is preserved in the Alexander B. Goldenweiser Museum-Apartment in Moscow, based on his archive and library donated to the state in 1955. The year 1975, the centenary of his birth, was marked by UNESCO as the year of A. B. Goldenweiser, and a Moscow children’s music school was later named in his honor.

Connections

This figure has 17 connections in the art history graph.