Leonid Roizman

Leonid Isaakovich Roizman was a Soviet organist, pianist, musicologist, and music pedagogue of Jewish descent. He was born on January 4, 1916, in Kyiv, into the family of Ekaterina Mikhailovna Roizman (née Grotskaya), a teacher, and Isaac Grigoryevich Roizman, a mathematics teacher. His parents were social democrats and participants in the revolutionary movement. Roizman graduated from the school affiliated with the Moscow Conservatory, studying piano under B. M. Medvedev. He then entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied piano with Alexander Goldenweiser (graduating in 1938, postgraduate in 1941) and organ with Alexander Goedicke (graduating in 1941, postgraduate in 1946).

From 1942 until the end of his life, Roizman taught at the Moscow Conservatory, where he instructed students in special piano, organ, and harpsichord. Following the death of Alexander Goedicke in 1957, he took over as head of the organ class. In 1963, he was appointed a professor at the conservatory. For many years, he also taught special piano at the conservatory's affiliated music school. Through his initiative, two organs from the German firm W. Sauer were installed in the school building in 1967–1968, allowing students to learn the instrument.

Roizman's pedagogical influence was immense. Among his students were the founders of national professional organ schools in various Soviet republics, including Leopoldas Digris (Lithuania), Eteri Mgaloblishvili (Georgia), and Vladimir Tebenikhin (Kazakhstan). He also trained a large number of concertizing Russian organists and teachers, such as Natalia Gureeva, who succeeded him as head of the organ class, Oleg Yanchenko, Aleksey Parshin, Alexander Fiseisky, and the Russian-French organist Marina Tchebourkina.

As a performer, Leonid Roizman gave numerous concerts both within the Soviet republics and internationally. His extensive repertoire included works from various eras and styles, notably the music of J. S. Bach and his predecessors, as well as pieces by Soviet composers. His performance of Bach's chorale prelude "Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ" (BWV 639) is famously featured in Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film "Solaris".

Roizman's work as a historian and musicologist was equally significant. For 30 years, he collected invaluable material by studying archives, chronicles, and early Russian printed publications. This research culminated in his fundamental work, "The Organ in the History of Russian Musical Culture," published in 1979. This book provided generations of Russian organists with comprehensive information about the history of the organ in Russia. He also authored the book "The Organ Culture of Estonia" and numerous articles on performance and piano pedagogy.

His organizational and public activities had a lasting impact. From 1958 to 1969, Roizman chaired the permanent organ-building commission he had established, and from 1969, he was the deputy chairman of the Council for Organ Building of the USSR Ministry of Culture. Thanks to his initiative, a number of new pipe organs were installed in various cities across Russia between the 1960s and 1980s. In the Soviet Union, where the organ's liturgical role was suppressed, Roizman championed it as a secular concert instrument. He worked to expand the domestic organ repertoire by encouraging contemporary composers and creating arrangements, resulting in the publication of the two-volume anthology "Soviet Organ Music" (1971, 1974).

Roizman was also a prolific editor. His editorial work includes keyboard compositions by G. F. Handel and J. S. Bach, the six-volume series "Old Masters," piano sonatas by Haydn, and piano concertos by Haydn, Mozart, Weber, Mendelssohn, Rimsky-Korsakov, Lyapunov, and MacDowell. Furthermore, he was a member of the international editorial board for the New Bach Edition. An international organ music festival, held every few years at the Yaroslavl Philharmonic since 1997, is named in his honor.

Leonid Roizman was married to Larisa Vasilievna Mokhel, his former student who became a piano teacher. They had no children. He died in Moscow on March 26, 1989, and was buried next to his parents at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

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