Vladimir Sofronitsky

Infobox musical artist
Name = Vladimir Sofronitsky
Background = non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth_name = nowrap|Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky
Born = OldStyleDate|May 8|1901|April 25
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Died = death date and age|1961|08|26|1901|05|08
Moscow, Russia
Instrument = Piano
Genre = Classical
Occupation = Pianist
Years_active = 1918-1961

Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky (or Sofronitzky, Russian: Владимир Владимирович Софроницкий, "Vladimir Sofronitskij"; OldStyleDate|May 8|1901|April 25 – August 26, 1961) was a Russian pianist, best known as an interpreter of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, 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, 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 under Leonid Nikolayev, where Dmitri Shostakovich, Maria Yudina, 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.

He gave his first solo concert in 1919, and his only foreign tour in France between 1928 and 1929. The only other time he performed outside the Soviet Union was at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, when he was suddenly sent by Stalin to play for the allied leaders.

Sofronitsky taught at the Leningrad Conservatory from 1936 to 1942, and then at the Moscow Conservatory till his death.

Repertoire

Being Scriabin's posthumous son-in-law, Sofronitsky never met the composer. Nevertheless, the composer's wife vouched that the pianist was the most authentic interpreter of her late husband's works. Indeed, his Scriabin recordings are considered by many to be unsurpassed.

The other composer with which Sofronitsky had the greatest affinity is Frédéric Chopin. 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 to Nikolai Medtner, with focus on 19th-century Romantic composers and early 20-century Russians.

Recognition and Recordings

Little known in the West due to almost complete absence of concert tours and recordings, Sofronitsky was held in the highest regard in his native land. Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels looked up to Sofronitsky as their master, and famously, when Sofronitsky once drunkenly proclaimed the former to be a genius, Richter toasted him and proclaimed him to be a god. Upon hearing of Sofronitsky's death, Gilels was reputed to say that "The greatest pianist in the world has died".

Few of Sofronitsky's recordings are available in the West. One noteworthy release, in BMG's "Russian Piano School" series, contains a complete concert, including a wonderful, dreamy, mercurial account of Robert Schumann's "Piano Sonata No. 1", Op. 11. His issue in Phillips's Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century features Chopin Mazurkas and Waltzes on the first CD, and some of his legendary Scriabin on the second, including the 9th and 10th sonatas and a staggering "Vers la flamme". Denon Classics' Japanese Vladimir Sofronitsky Edition is a series of 15 CDs, 10 of which remain in print.

External links

* [http://www.sofronitsky.com Vladimir Sofronitsky homepage]
* [http://www.geocities.com/grahsco/Sofronitsky.html Vladimir Sofronitsky Tribute - Discography]
* [http://columbia.jp/russian/index.html Denon Classics' Russian releases (Japanese) ]
* [http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~ryzhik/sofr.html Maria Yudina's recollection on Sofronitsky]