Grigory Ginzburg

Grigory Romanovich Ginzburg (16/29 May 1904, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire – 5 December 1961, Moscow, USSR) was a Soviet pianist. He was named Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1946) and received the Stalin Prize, 2nd class (1949) for his concert and performing activity.

Born in Nizhny Novgorod, he was brought up from the age of six, after his father’s death, in the family of the pianist and teacher Alexander Goldenweiser, with whom he began formal music studies. In 1917 Ginzburg entered the Moscow Conservatory in Goldenweiser’s class, graduating in 1924, and he continued postgraduate study there with the same teacher until 1928.

In 1927 he took part in the 1st International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition and won the fourth prize. In 1933 the critic Grigory Kogan described him as a major virtuoso whose virtuosity served musical thought: precision of formulation and perfect expression of musical ideas were central to his playing, while empty effects that distorted musical meaning were alien to his nature; at times, Kogan noted, Ginzburg’s concentrated immersion in a work could even incline him toward excessive contemplation.

From 1929 he taught at the Moscow Conservatory (Tchaikovsky Conservatory), becoming a professor in 1935. Among his pupils were Gleb Axelrod, Sergey Dorensky, Alexei Skavronsky, and Valentina Belykh. A later assessment of his place in Russian pianism characterized him as one of the last, and perhaps a peak, masters of the “classical piano” tradition associated with Liszt, in contrast to the more percussive, post-classical instrument and technique typical of later twentieth-century generations.

Ginzburg died in Moscow on 5 December 1961 and was buried at Donskoye Cemetery. His wife was the pianist Revekka (Riva) Lvovna Ginzburg (née Schneerson), originally from Kopys. Their children included the musicologist and critic Lev Grigoryevich Ginzburg (1930–2022) and the pianist, accompanist, and teacher Elizaveta Grigoryevna Ginzburg (born 11 April 1939 in Moscow); their grandson is the film director and screenwriter Viktor Lvovich Ginzburg (born 1959).

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