Alexander Winkler was a Russian composer, pianist, music critic, and teacher. He was born in Kharkiv on March 3, 1865, and died in Besançon on August 6, 1935.
He graduated from the Kharkiv Music School, where he studied with Ilya Slatin, and from the law faculty of Kharkiv University in 1887. He continued his piano studies in Paris with Victor Alphonse Duvernoy and in Vienna with Theodor Leschetizky, and studied composition with Karl Navratil.
After returning to Kharkiv in 1890, Winkler taught piano at the Kharkiv school. From 1896 to 1924 he taught piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, becoming a professor in 1908. His students included Sergei Prokofiev. From 1902 to 1910 he also worked as a music critic, publishing articles in the German-language St. Petersburg Newspaper.
Winkler wrote symphonic, chamber, piano, vocal, and choral music. His works included the Fantasy Overture “In Brittany,” the Dramatic Overture, Variations on a Finnish Theme for violin and orchestra, and “The Last Spring” for cello and orchestra. He composed three string quartets, a piano quartet and quintet, sonatas for viola and cello, songs, and piano pieces, including Variations and Fugue on a Theme by J. S. Bach for two pianos, four hands. His First String Quartet in C major (1897) received a prize from the St. Petersburg Society for Chamber Music, and his symphonic music was performed at the Public Russian Symphony Concerts.
Winkler was part of the Belyayev circle and took part in its collaborative projects, including two sets of variations on Russian themes and an orchestration of Robert Schumann’s “Carnival.” He also made four-hand piano arrangements of orchestral works by Mikhail Glinka, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov, Alexander Scriabin, Nikolai Cherepnin, and Nikolai Myaskovsky. His music and arrangements were published by M. P. Belyayev, D. Rahter, and Urbanek. Glazunov dedicated Four Preludes and Fugues, Op. 101, to him; Prokofiev dedicated Four Etudes, Op. 2, and A. N. Kobyliansky dedicated a piano sonata, Op. 3.
In 1923 Winkler moved to France and lived in Besançon and Morteau. He gave private lessons in piano, harmony, and counterpoint, and taught harmony at the Besançon Municipal School of Music from 1924. He performed as a composer and pianist and gave public lectures in towns across Franche-Comté, including Besançon, Pontarlier, and Dole. In 1933 he performed his sonata with violinist D. Manteufel at the Gaveau Hall in Paris, as part of a music exhibition organized by the Russian Musical Society Abroad.