Felix Blumenfeld

Felix Mikhailovich Blumenfeld (19 April 1863 – 21 January 1931) was a pianist, composer, conductor, and music teacher. He was born in Kovalyovka in the Kherson Governorate (now within the city limits of Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine) and died in Moscow. In 1927 he was awarded the title of Honored Worker of Arts of the Republic.

He came from a musical and educated family: his father, Mikhail Frantsevich Blumenfeld (1823–1883), taught music and French, and his mother was Maria Sigizmundovna Blumenfeld (née Shimanovskaya). He was the brother of the composer Sigizmund Blumenfeld. Blumenfeld studied with Gustav Neuhaus, who was married to his elder sister; through this family connection he was the uncle of Heinrich Neuhaus, and he was also related to Karol Szymanowski, who was his grandnephew.

In 1880 Blumenfeld entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, studying piano with Fyodor Stein and composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. While still a student he gained a reputation as a virtuoso with an exceptional ability to read and perform new music at sight. This made him the first performer of many piano works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Mily Balakirev, Alexander Glazunov, and other contemporary composers at semi-private musical evenings in Saint Petersburg. In 1883 he also accompanied Rimsky-Korsakov on the piano when the latter presented his completed edition of Mussorgsky’s opera "Khovanshchina" to the theatrical committee of the Imperial Theatres.

He graduated from the conservatory in 1885 with a gold medal. Immediately after completing his studies he was invited to teach at the conservatory, becoming a professor in 1897. In 1905 he resigned in solidarity with Rimsky-Korsakov after the latter’s dismissal, while continuing an active career as a pianist and conductor.

Blumenfeld maintained a close artistic partnership with Fyodor Chaliapin, frequently accompanying him. In 1908 he conducted the Paris premiere of Mussorgsky’s "Boris Godunov" with Chaliapin in the title role, an event that received an enthusiastic response from the French press. That same year Blumenfeld suffered a stroke that caused paralysis of his right hand, forcing him thereafter to focus mainly on teaching.

In 1911 he returned to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. In 1918 he moved to Kyiv and became a professor at the Kyiv Conservatory, serving as its rector from 1920 to 1922 (other sources indicate 1918–1922). From 1922 he taught as a professor at the Moscow Conservatory.

His students included Simon Barere (Saint Petersburg period); Vladimir Horowitz, Natan Perelman, Gleb Taranov, and Alexander Gauk (Kyiv period); and Alexander Tsfasman (Moscow period). Maria Yudina took private lessons with him, and among his later pupils were Maria Grinberg and Vladimir Belov, who worked as his assistant in Blumenfeld’s final years.

As a composer, Blumenfeld wrote more than one hundred piano pieces and about fifty art songs. Among his larger-scale works are the Allegro de concert, Op. 7, and the Symphony in C minor, Op. 39. His Étude for left hand alone in A-flat major, Op. 36, became particularly well known.

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