Abraham Yampolsky was a Russian and Soviet violinist and music teacher, and a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Born on 29 September (11 October, New Style) 1890 in Yekaterinoslav, he became one of the leading teachers in the history of Russian violin performance.
Yampolsky studied violin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Sergei Korguyev, and also studied composition with Nikolai Sokolov, Jāzeps Vītols, and Maximilian Steinberg. After graduating in 1913, he returned to Yekaterinoslav, where he performed as a soloist and chamber musician and taught. In 1920 he moved to Moscow and became assistant concertmaster in the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra. Two years later he joined Persimfans and began teaching at the Moscow Conservatory; he was appointed professor in 1926 and head of its violin department in 1936. He also taught at the Gnessin Institute.
One of the founders of the modern Russian violin school, Yampolsky based his teaching on an individual approach to each pupil and on cultivating creative feeling and temperament in performance. He guided many students from their first lessons to artistic maturity. His pupils included Leonid Kogan, Boris Goldstein, Julian Sitkovetsky, Igor Bezrodny, Eduard Grach, Yuri Yankelevich, Mark Lubotsky, Mikhail Fikhtengoltz, Leonarda Brushtein, Alexei Gorokhov, and Solomon Kutsovsky.
Yampolsky set out his pedagogical ideas in the pamphlets On the Method of Working with a Student and On the Cultivation of Sound Culture in the Violinist, published in 1959 and 1968. He edited violin studies, wrote cadenzas for concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, and Paganini, and made numerous arrangements for violin and piano. He was named Honored Art Worker of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1937, received two Orders of the Red Banner of Labour, and earned a Doctor of Arts degree in 1940. He died in Moscow on 17 August 1956 and was buried in the New Donskoy Cemetery.