Biography (read more)
Felix Mikhailovich Blumenfeld was born on 19 April 1863 at Kovalyovka near Yelisavetgrad in the Kherson Governorate, now in Ukraine, the son of Mikhail Frantsevich Blumenfeld, of Austrian Jewish origin, and Maria Szymanowska. He was Heinrich Neuhaus’s uncle and first cousin once removed to Karol Szymanowski. He studied first with Gustav Neuhaus, who had married his elder sister, then at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory from 1881 to 1885, taking composition with Rimsky-Korsakov and piano with Fedor Stein. He taught piano at the same conservatory from 1895 to 1918 while conducting at the Mariinsky Theatre until 1911. He died in Moscow on 21 January 1931.
At the Mariinsky he conducted the premieres of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas and the Russian premiere of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and in 1908 conducted the Paris premiere of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. He taught in Kiev from 1918 to 1922, where Vladimir Horowitz was among the pupils in his masterclasses, then returned to the Moscow Conservatory in 1922 and taught there until his death; Simon Barere, Maria Yudina, Nathan Perelman, Anatole Kitain and Maria Grinberg also studied with him. As a pianist he played a great deal of his Russian contemporaries’ music. His own works, shaped by Chopin and Tchaikovsky, include a symphony, an Allegro de Concert for piano and orchestra, songs and a large quantity of solo piano music.
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