Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky was born in St Petersburg on 8 May 1901. His family moved to Warsaw in 1903, and it was there that he began piano lessons, first with Anna Lebedeva-Getcevich and then with Aleksander Michałowski. From 1916 to 1921 he studied at the Petrograd Conservatory with Leonid Nikolayev, alongside Dmitri Shostakovich and Maria Yudina.

He gave his first solo concert in 1919. In 1917 he had met Elena Scriabina, the eldest daughter of Alexander Scriabin, and they married in 1920. He toured abroad only once, to France, in 1928 and 1929. He taught at the Leningrad Conservatory from 1936 to 1942 and at the Moscow Conservatory from then until his death. He was named an Honoured Artist of the RSFSR in 1942 and awarded the Stalin Prize, First Class, in 1943, and in 1945 was sent at Stalin’s behest to play for the Allied leaders at the Potsdam Conference. He died on 29 August 1961.

Sofronitsky is identified above all with Scriabin. He never met the composer, but through his marriage to Scriabin’s eldest daughter he came to be regarded as the most authentic interpreter of that music, and it is the repertoire his name is still attached to. His playing otherwise centred on the Romantic literature, and he was known as a specialist in it.

Because he left the Soviet Union only once, for a single season in France, his reputation was made almost entirely at home, and abroad it has depended on recordings circulating after the fact. Among Soviet musicians his standing was extraordinary. Both Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels looked on him as their master, and on learning of his death Gilels is reported to have said that the greatest pianist in the world had died.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Sofronitsky