Liszt lazar berman biography
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A Musician's Reverie".
Lazar Berman was born in Leningrad in 1930. Before that, he had been generally restricted to the Soviet concert circuit, playing on old and decrepit pianos to audiences of varied degrees of interest. Until his death in 2005, Lazar Berman taught as a professor at the Musikhochschule Weimar and at the legendary Accademia Pianistica in Imola, Italy.
Photo: © C. Bechstein Archiv
His students included Sonya Bach, Italian pianists Maurizio Baglini, Enrico Elisi, and Enrico Pace, Vladimir Stoupel, Vardan Mamikonian, Victor Chestopal, Rueibin Chen, and Viktoriya Yermolyeva.
Lazar Berman, Piano
26 No. 2
53
The Russian pianist, Lazar Naumovich Berman [Russian: Лазарь Наумович Берман, Lasari Naumovič Berman] was born to Jewish parents in Leningrad.
When Berman was nine, the family moved to Moscow so that he could study with Aleksandr Goldenweiser at the Conservatoire.
His being Jewish only aggravated the issue (In the Soviet Union, Jews were considered potential dissidents and subjects to flee the country.) The frequency of this interference declined, however, as the Soviet Union entered the last phase of its existence, and he finally left Russia for Italy in 1990, settling in Florence in 1995.
Lazar Berman's playing showed great technical brilliance, showmanship, emotional and physical force.
He had the endurance to play three concertos or sonatas in one night, and was considered a brilliant interpreter of Franz Liszt, winning the 1977 Franz Liszt Prize in Hungary for his interpretation of the Transcendental Studies. She introduced her son to the piano, he entered his first competition at the age of three, and recorded a Mozart fantasia and a mazurka that he had composed himself at the age of seven, before he could even read music.
They are titled "The Years of Peregrination. He once described the driving forces of his style as being lyricism, clarity and virtuosity. When Lazar was 9, the family moved to Moscow so that he could study with Alexander Goldenweiser at the Conservatoire, as well as with Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Sofronitsky and Maria Yudina. At the age of 12 he played Franz Liszt's La campanella to a British audience over the radio; in 1956 he won a prize at the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Belgium, with Vladimir Ashkenazy; and in 1958, he performed in London and recorded for Saga records.
Although he was known to international music aficionados who had heard the occasional recording on the Russian Melodiya record label, as well as those who visited the Soviet Union, he was not generally well known outside Russia before his 1975 American tour, organised by the impresario Jacques Leiser.
Berman has also worked with the greatest conductors (Bernstein, Karajan, Abbado, etc.) and orchestras (New York Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, etc.) of his time. But after his 1975 tour, he was immediately in great demand, with Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, and CBS vying to record him. Invitations to tour outside the Soviet Union were ignored by the Soviet state concert agency, Gosconcert.
The next year he made his formal debut playing W.A. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. Invitations to tour outside the Soviet Union were ignored by the Soviet state concert agency, Gosconcert. In 1941, students, pupils and parents were evacuated to Kuibishev, a city on the Volga, because of World War II.
Living conditions were so poor that his mother had to cut the fingers from a pair of gloves to allow him to continue to practise without freezing his hands.
His playing of Chopin is well documented, in both a concert film and a DGG recording of the polonaises from the 1970s.
He subsequently began to acquire a small international visibility.
Berman was born to Jewish parents in Leningrad. As the result, his name was black-listed, and his career was black-flagged by the Soviet authorities. He became an overnight sensation.