Lev Pulver

Lev Mikhaylovich Pulver (Yiddish pronunciation: Leib Pulver, European spelling: Leo Pulver), was a Russian-Jewish musician. He was born in December, 18, 1883, in Yekaterinoslav ( Dnepropetrovsk) in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), and died in 1970 in Moscow, Russia. He was an offspring of a renowned klezmorim's family.

Pulver studied violin since early childhood with his father; later on, he studied with the Czech violinist Otakar Sevcik in Kiev. Pulver graduated from St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied composition under A.K. Lyadov.

He was a symphonic concert-master and conductor, a founding member of the Stradivari Quartet. He was the Musical Director of the State Jewish Theatre in Moscow.

Compositions

Pulver composed incidental music (including Shakespeare's "King Lear", Sholom Aleichem's "200.000" and "The Man of the Air"), operettas ("Gulliver", "Inside the Big Top"), songs, and Yiddish folk-songs arrangements. Some of his tunes have been considered as Jewish folklore. He was of the important musicians bridging the traditional Eastern European Jewish music with the Western classical music forms.

Recordings

A few recordings of his music are available featuring the performances of the GOSET orchestra: Solomon Mikhoels, Benjamin Zuskin, Solomon Khromchenko, Misha Alexandrovich, Nekhama Lifshitz.