Vladimir Sofronitsky
Encyclopedia
Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky (or Sofronitzky, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

: Владимир Владимирович Софроницкий, Vladimir Sofronitskij; – August 26, 1961) was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n pianist
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

, best known as an interpreter of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...

, whose daughter he married.

Biography

Vladimir Sofronitsky was born to a physics teacher father and a mother from an artistic family. In 1903 his family moved to Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

, where he started piano lessons with Anna Lebedeva-Getcevich (a student of Nikolai Rubinstein), and later (from age nine) with Aleksander Michałowski.

From 1916 to 1921, Sofronitsky studied in the Petrograd Conservatory
Saint Petersburg Conservatory
The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory is a music school in Saint Petersburg. In 2004, the conservatory had around 275 faculty members and 1,400 students.-History:...

 under Leonid Nikolayev, where Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

, Maria Yudina
Maria Yudina
Maria Veniaminovna Yudina was an influential Soviet pianist.Yudina was born to a Jewish family in Nevel, Russia. She studied at the Petrograd Conservatory under Anna Yesipova and Leonid Vladimirovich Nikolayev. She also briefly studied privately with Felix Blumenfeld. Her classmates included...

, and Elena Scriabina, the eldest daughter of the deceased Alexander Scriabin, were among his classmates. He met Scriabina in 1917 and married her in 1920. While he had already divulged a sympathy for the piano music of the recently deceased mystic composer—as attested by Yudina—he now had a greater intellectual and emotional connection to Scriabin's works through his wife and through the Scriabin in-laws. Sofronitsky was also acclaimed as an outstanding pianist by the composer Alexander Glazunov
Alexander Glazunov
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was a Russian composer of the late Russian Romantic period, music teacher and conductor...

 and the musicologist and critic Alexander Ossovsky
Alexander Ossovsky
Alexander Vyacheslavovich Ossovsky , 1871 –July 31, 1957) was a renowned Russian musical writer, critic and musicologist, professor at Saint Petersburg Conservatory, pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and friend of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Siloti and Nikolai...

.

He gave his first solo concert in 1919, and his only foreign tour in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 between 1928 and 1929. The only other time he performed outside the Soviet Union was at the Potsdam Conference
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...

 in 1945, when he was suddenly sent by Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 to play for the allied leaders.

Sofronitsky taught at the Leningrad Conservatory from 1936 to 1942, and then at the Moscow Conservatory
Moscow Conservatory
The Moscow Conservatory is a higher musical education institution in Moscow, and the second oldest conservatory in Russia after St. Petersburg Conservatory. Along with the St...

 until his death.

He gave many performances at the Scriabin Museum in Moscow, especially during the latter part of his career.

Sofronitsky made a fair number of recordings in the last two decades of his life, but a relatively small number overall compared with the titanic efforts of his younger countrymen Sviatoslav Richter
Sviatoslav Richter
Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter was a Soviet pianist well known for the depth of his interpretations, virtuoso technique, and vast repertoire. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.-Childhood:...

 and Emil Gilels
Emil Gilels
Emil Grigoryevich Gilels was a Soviet pianist, widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.His last name is sometimes transliterated Hilels.-Biography:...

. Drawn principally to Romantic repertoire, Sofronitsky recorded a large number of Scriabin works and also compositions by Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

, Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

, Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

, Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

, Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

, Lyadov, Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

, Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

, and others.

Repertoire

Having met Scriabin's daughter only after her father's death, Sofronitsky never met the composer. Nevertheless, his wife vouched that the pianist was the most authentic interpreter of her late father's works. Indeed, his Scriabin recordings are considered by many to be unsurpassed.

The other composer with whom Sofronitsky had the greatest affinity is Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

. He once told an interviewer: "A love for Chopin has followed me through the course of my entire life." Beyond Chopin and Scriabin, Sofronitsky had a wide repertoire spanning major composers from Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

 to Nikolai Medtner
Nikolai Medtner
Nikolai Karlovich Medtner was a Russian composer and pianist.A younger contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, he wrote a substantial number of compositions, all of which include the piano...

 and reaching as far as the works of Boris Goltz (1913–1942), with a focus on 19th-century Romantic composers and early 20th-century Russians.

Recognition and recordings

Although little known in the West, never having toured or recorded there, Sofronitsky was held in the highest regard in his native land. Sviatoslav Richter
Sviatoslav Richter
Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter was a Soviet pianist well known for the depth of his interpretations, virtuoso technique, and vast repertoire. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.-Childhood:...

 and Emil Gilels
Emil Gilels
Emil Grigoryevich Gilels was a Soviet pianist, widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.His last name is sometimes transliterated Hilels.-Biography:...

 looked up to Sofronitsky as their master, and famously, when Sofronitsky once drunkenly proclaimed that Richter was a genius, in return Richter toasted him and proclaimed him a god. Upon hearing of Sofronitsky's death, Gilels was reputed to have said that "the greatest pianist in the world has died."

Sofronitsky's recordings have not been issued systematically in the West. One noteworthy release, in BMG's "Russian Piano School" series, contains a complete concert, including a mercurial and highly praised account of Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

's Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 11. His issue in Philips' Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century features Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

 mazurka
Mazurka
The mazurka is a Polish folk dance in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, and with accent on the third or second beat.-History:The folk origins of the mazurek are two other Polish musical forms—the slow machine...

s and waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...

es on the first CD and some of his legendary Scriabin on the second, including the 2nd (first movement), 3rd, 4th, and 9th sonatas and a performance of Vers la flamme
Vers la flamme
Vers la flamme, Op. 72 is one of Alexander Scriabin's last few pieces for piano, written in 1914.The melody of the piece is very simple, consisting mainly of descending half steps. However, the unusual harmonies and difficult tremolos create an intense, fiery luminance...

. Denon Classics' (Japan) Vladimir Sofronitsky Edition is a series of 15 CDs, ten of which remain in print. Other Sofronitsky recordings have been issued by such labels as Arkadia, Arlecchino, Multisonic, Urania, and, most notably, Vista Vera, which has released seventeen volumes of Sofronitsky recordings as of April, 2010.

He was awarded a Stalin Prize of the first class in 1943 and proclaimed an Honoured Artist of the RSFSR in 1942.

External links

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