Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky

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Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronizki ( Russian Владимир Владимирович Софроницкий ., Scientific transliteration Vladimir Vladimirovič Sofronickij ; born April 25 . Jul / 8. May  1901 greg. In St. Petersburg ; † 29. August 1961 in Moscow ) was a Soviet pianist and music teacher. He is known for interpreting the compositions of Alexander Scriabin and has taught at the Saint Petersburg and Moscow Conservatoires .

Life

childhood and education

Vladimir Sofronitsky was born in St. Petersburg as the youngest son of the married couple Vladimir Nikolayevich and Vera Aleksandrowa Sofronizki. The father worked as a math and physics teacher at the Smolny Institute , the mother was a great niece of the icon painter Vladimir Borowikowski . In 1903 the family moved to Warsaw. At the age of six Sofronizki became a student of the piano teacher AW Lebedewa-Getzewitsch. At the age of ten he gave public concerts for the first time and, on the advice of Alexander Glasunow, became a student of Aleksander Michałowski . The family moved back to St. Petersburg in 1913, Sofronizki remained Michałowski's student until the outbreak of World War I and traveled monthly to Poland to take piano lessons. From the age of 16 he studied composition at the Petrograd Conservatory in Maximilian Steinberg's class and piano with Leonid Nikolajew . Sofronizki's fellow students in the piano class were Marija Judina , Dmitri Shostakovich and, from 1917, Jelena Scriabin, the eldest daughter of Alexander Scriabin, whom he married in 1920. Already during his student days he performed regularly and gained musical recognition from Vasily Safonow , Nikolai Medtner , Felix Blumenfeld and Alexander Glasunow. In 1921 Sofronizki successfully completed his studies and received the highest award for his final concert, which he played with Marija Yudina. Shostakovich remembered this graduate concert at which the piano sonata in B minor by Franz Liszt was performed by both graduates "as one of the strongest musical impressions of his youth".

Career

After completing his studies, Sofronitsky became a sought-after concert pianist, he performed frequently in his hometown and toured the entire Soviet Union. In 1928 he gave concerts in Warsaw and Paris. Sofronizki then spent two years in France, his concerts were well discussed but an international breakthrough was not in sight. At the beginning of 1930 he went back to Leningrad and seamlessly continued his career there.

Sofronizki enjoyed recognition not only from the audience, but from early music colleagues and artists. Konstantin Igumnow , Heinrich Neuhaus , the painter Pjotr ​​Konchalowski and the poet Kornei Tschukowski regularly attended his concerts. Wsewolod Meyerhold dedicated his production of the Queen of Spades to him in 1935 . Egon Petri and Vladimir Horowitz unanimously emphasized Sofronizki's pianistic uniqueness. Looking back, Neuhaus remembers that he had not dealt with any pianist as intensively as Sofronitsky and Sergei Prokofiev said: "He plays my" sarcasms "better than they were written".

In 1936 Sofronitsky began teaching at the Leningrad Conservatory in addition to his concert activities. In the concert season 1937/38 he performed a highly acclaimed cycle of 12 concerts on the previous day in the Small Hall of the Conservatory, designed programmatically as an anthology of piano art over 300 years and ranging from Dieterich Buxtehude to the contemporary Soviet composer Boris Goltz. For this he received an honorary doctorate from the conservatory and was appointed professor. He spent the war years teaching and giving concerts - as far as the circumstances allowed - in Leningrad. In the spring of 1942 he managed to be evacuated from the besieged city to Moscow, where he settled permanently. From November 1942 he taught as a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, a position he held until the end of his life.

Sofronizki, Honored People's Artist of the SFSR, received the Stalin Prize in 1943 and designed the musical program of the Potsdam Conference in 1945 together with Emil Gilels and Galina Barinowa. This was his last appearance outside the Soviet Union.

Although Scriabin herself never heard Sofronitsky play, Scriabin's wife heard him and confirmed that his Scriabin playing came closest to that of the composer. Sofronizki can therefore be regarded as one of the most authentic Scriabin interpreters. Sofronitsky had one of his greatest successes with the performance of Chopin's entire piano works on five consecutive days in the Great Concert Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in November 1949. Even great pianists like Svyatoslaw Richter and Emil Gilels looked up to Sofronitsky and learned a lot from his playing cannot be assigned to any school. Once, when Sofronitsky called Richter a genius, Richter, who called him a god, trumped him. Sofronizki, who stopped performing in the West after a tour of France in 1929, has remained an insider tip for piano connoisseurs all over the world. The few, meanwhile somewhat more numerous publications confirm his outstanding pianistic rank.

Sofronitsky gave his last concert on January 9, 1961 in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. He died of illness on August 29, 1961 and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery. The Russian-Canadian pianist Viviana Sofronitsky is Sofronizki's daughter from his second marriage.

Sound carrier

Some of Sofronizki's recordings are available on CD: there are CDs with Schumann's first sonata op. 11, as well as some waltzes and mazurkas by Chopin . A CD from 1986 by harmonia mundi, Arles , contains Schubert's piano sonata No. 21 as well as song transcriptions by Franz Liszt . There are also recordings of some of Scriabin's works , including the 9th and 10th Sonatas, the Etudes Op. 8 and verse la flame . In 2016, all of Sofronizky's concert recordings that have come down to us from Russia were released by the Russian Melodiya in a box with 5 CDs and a documentary on DVD.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Софроницкий Владимир Владимирович. Saint Petersburg Philharmonic , accessed January 26, 2019 (Russian).
  2. ^ Solomon Volkov: St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. Free Press, New York 1995, ISBN 978-0-6848-3296-8 . P. 366, quote: […] which Shostakovich considered one as the strongest musical impressions of his youth.
  3. ↑ Aleksander Scriabin, Igor Nikonowitsch: Memories of Sofronizki. Klassika-XXI, Moscow 2008, p. 189, quote: Он играет мои “Сарказмы” лучше, чем они написаны.
  4. ↑ Stuart Isacoff: When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn's Cold War Triumph, and Its Aftermath. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 2017. ( limited preview in Google Book Search, English)
  5. ↑ Maureen Buja: Forgotten Pianists: Vladimir Sofronitsky. Interlude, January 30, 2017, accessed January 14, 2018 .
  6. ^ Norbert Hornig: Vladimir Sofronitsky. Spirituality and sophistication. Deutschlandfunk , April 24, 2014, accessed on January 14, 2018 .
  7. ^ Werner Theurich: piano rarities. The pianist who delighted the judge. Der Spiegel , July 24, 2016, accessed January 14, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Sofronitski, Vladimir Vladimirovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Софроницкий, Владимир Владимирович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian pianist
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 1961
Place of death Moscow