Alexander Paley (original surname Abramovich; born 9 January 1956 in Kishinev, Moldavian SSR) is a Moldovan Soviet and American pianist and conductor. He was awarded the title Honored Artist of the Moldavian SSR in 1985 and People's Artist of Moldova in 2023. He is a prize-winner of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition, where he received first prize in 1984.
He was born into a family of doctors. In 1963 he entered a city music school, and from 1967 to 1974 he studied at the Special Secondary Music School in Kishinev named after E. Coca under Evgenia Revzo. He began appearing in solo concerts at the age of thirteen, in April 1969, when he was still known as Alexander Abramovich. In 1972 he won the Moldavian Republican Competition of Classical Music Performers.
In 1981 Paley graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied first in the class of Bella Davidovich and, after her emigration, with Vera Gornostayeva. From 1981 to 1984 he taught general piano at the Moldavian State Institute of Arts named after G. Muzicescu, and until 1988 he was a soloist of the Moldavian State Philharmonic. He was the first performer of works by Moldovan composers, including music by Boris Dubossarsky, Vasile Zagorschi, Marian Styrcea, Solomon Lobel, Stefan Neaga, and Mikhail Kolsa.
In addition to his Bach Competition success in Leipzig in 1984, Paley received the Bösendorfer Prize in Vienna in 1986 and first prize at the Pancho Vladigerov International Competition for pianists and violinists in Bulgaria the same year. In 1988 he did not return from a concert tour to Italy with the tenor Mihail Muntean and settled in New York. After a difficult period for his relatives in the Soviet Union, his family was later able to leave for America as emigration became possible.
In his personal life, he was first married to Valentina Zelikman, a piano student at the Moldavian State Institute of Arts; they had a daughter, Irina. In 1993 he divorced and married the Taiwanese pianist Pei-Wen Chen. Paley later became an organizer of classical music festivals in Moulin d'Andé in Normandy and in Richmond.
Paley has built an extensive discography centered on the piano repertoire. Among his notable recordings are the complete piano works of Mily Balakirev, the complete piano etudes of Alexander Scriabin, the Second and Fourth Piano Concertos of Anton Rubinstein, the four Mephisto Waltzes of Franz Liszt, and albums devoted to Bach, Weber, Rameau, Tchaikovsky, Medtner, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Enescu. A book on his life and work by Lyudmila Ryaboshapka, “Alexander Paley: The Romance of Creativity,” was published in Kishinev in 2020.
Connections
This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.