Serafima Mogilevskaya

Serafima Leonidovna Mogilewskaja ( Ukrainian Серафима Леонідівна Могилевська ; Russian Серафима Леонидовна Могилевская ; English transcription Serafima Leonidovna Mogilevskaya, * 16th November 1915 in Odessa , † 4. May 2016 in Cologne ) was a Russian pianist and music teacher at the Conservatory of Odessa. She was the mother and grandmother of the pianists Evgeni Mogilewski and Alexander Mogilewski . She lived in Cologne since 1995.

life and work

Serafima Mogilewskaja was born in November 1915 into the family of the conductor, trumpeter and music teacher Leonid Jakowlewitsch Mogilewski (1886–1950), co-founder and one of the first professors of the Odessa Conservatory. She began to learn to play the piano at the age of five. At the age of seven, she entered the Odessa Music School. She broke off her musical training, which she felt was too mechanical, and completed a technical training as an engineer. At the age of 18 or 19, she turned back to music and entered the Odessa Conservatory on the intercession of her father. She met Emil Gilels and Swjatoslaw Richter during her student days . From this point on she had a lifelong friendship with Richter. At the same time she met the pianist Gedeon Izrailewich Leizerovich (1910–1977), her future husband. In 1937 she moved to Heinrich Neuhaus's class at the Moscow Conservatory . Leizerovich followed her to the Moscow Conservatory and studied with Konstantin Igumnov . Mogilevskaya and Leizerovich then married in Moscow. In 1941 she completed her training with the recommendation for graduate studies.

The outbreak of World War II prevented such postgraduate studies and she and her husband performed music-pedagogical tasks in Ashgabat for five years . After the war, the couple returned to Odessa. Both took over a teaching position at the conservatory there. In 1945 the son Yevgeny was born. She soon taught him piano according to her method. After graduating in piano, Serafima Mogilewskaja entrusted his further training to Heinrich Neuhaus.

In 2010 Serafima Mogilewskaja published the autobiographical work Мысли о музыке и о себе ("Thoughts about music and me"). As a piano teacher she produced a number of outstanding pianists such as Alexei Botvinov, F. Lyubarsky, Michael Legotsky and not to forget her son Yevgeny Mogilewski. She enjoyed working with piano pedagogy and often with children. In memory of Serafima Mogilewskaja, the Serafima Mogilewskaja children's piano competition has been held annually since 2018 as part of the “Odessa Classics” event .

Serafima Mogilevskaya spent most of her life as a music teacher in her hometown of Odessa. After the death of her husband, she first settled in Moscow in the early 1980s. The last phase of her life from 1995 onwards she spent and taught (!) In Cologne, with a preference for children. Her son Yevgeny Mogilevsky said about his mother in 2008 as follows: “My mother Serafima Leonidovna Mogilevskaya is really an extraordinary woman. At 93, she is constantly finding talented children and young people with whom she can work for free. Even now she actually has a really serious piano school. Here my mother not only teaches children the way the best professors have taught them, but also according to her very own approach. "

Works by Serafima Mogilevskaya

• Мысли о музыке и о себе (“Thoughts about music and me”), Издательство Вернера Регена, 2010, ISBN 978-5-903070-32-9 .

swell

• Carsten Dürer: Serafima Mogilewskaja - student of Neuhaus, companion of Richter and Gilels. In: Piano News. February 2008, accessed August 18, 2020 . 
• Matilda Jordanova-Duda: Clean and talk, give the injection and talk. In: AiD - Integration in Germany. June 15, 2005, accessed on August 18, 2020 (there are some statements about Serafima Mogilewskaja). 

Web links

• Literature by and about Serafima Mogilewskaja in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Алина Иохвидова (Alina Iokhvidova, Toronto): Серафима Могилевская (Serafima Mogilewskaja). In: Russian Google. Archived from the original on August 19, 2020 ; accessed on August 18, 2020 (Russian). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The article is based on the article of the same name on the Russian-language Wikipedia.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r} Carsten Dürer: Serafima Mogilewskaja.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Matilda Jordanova-Duda: Serafima Mogilewskaja.
4. ↑ Odessa Classics - Serafima Mogilevskaya Children's Piano Competition. May 25, 2018, archived from the original on June 1, 2018 ; accessed on August 18, 2020 (Ukrainian). 
5. ↑ The quote is taken from the Russian Wikipedia as a translation.