Samuil Feinberg

Samuil Yevgenyevich Feinberg (26 May 1890–22 October 1962) was a Russian and Soviet pianist, music educator, and composer. He received the title Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1937) and was awarded the Stalin Prize, 2nd class (1946).

He was born in Odessa (Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire) into the family of Isrul-Eigen Ilyich Feinberg and Anna Akimovna Rabinovich. In 1894 he moved with his family to Moscow. His early musical instruction came from Sofya Abramovna Gurevich; later he studied with A. F. Jensen and then with Alexander Goldenweiser (piano) and Nikolai Zhilyayev (composition). He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1911, having prepared all 48 preludes and fugues from J. S. Bach’s "The Well-Tempered Clavier" for performance; decades later he recorded the complete cycle.

After the outbreak of World War I he was drafted, but illness with typhoid led to his demobilization in 1915, after which he returned to concert activity. In the 1920s he toured Italy and Germany, where his virtuosity and musicianship drew notice, and he took part in musical gatherings (“Wednesdays”) associated with Pavel Lamm at the Moscow Conservatory.

From 1922 Feinberg served as a professor at the Moscow Conservatory (Tchaikovsky Conservatory), and from 1936 he headed a department there. He died in Moscow in 1962 and was buried at Golovinskoye Cemetery.

As a performer he was close to Alexander Scriabin and became an important interpreter of Scriabin’s music. He gave first performances of works by Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolai Myaskovsky, and other Russian composers, while also maintaining a repertoire that included Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and Schumann.

Feinberg began composing at the age of eleven. His most significant works include three piano concertos (1931, 1944, 1947) and twelve piano sonatas written between 1915 and 1962, with the Sixth Sonata being especially popular. His music has been recorded by performers including Viktor Bunin (Piano Concerto No. 3) and, in later years, the French pianist Christophe Sirodeau, who recorded several sonatas and other works, including songs and a concert performance of Piano Concerto No. 1.

He also wrote on pianism and musical aesthetics, including the monograph "Pianism as an Art" (published posthumously in 1965) and articles later collected as "The Fate of Musical Form" (1984). Among his notable students at the Moscow Conservatory were Viktor Merzhanov, Vladimir Natanson, Valeria Varshavskaya, Nina Emelyanova, Viktor Bunin, Leonid Zyuzin, Tatyana Yevtodyeva, Lyudmila Roshchina, and Zinaida Ignatyeva.

Connections

This figure has 7 connections in the art history graph.