Andrei Alekseyevich Borisyak (1885–1962) was a Russian and Soviet cellist, music teacher, poet, and astronomer. Born in Samara into the family of a survey engineer, he spent his early childhood in Samara and Chelyabinsk. After a short stay in St. Petersburg, he moved with his parents to Kyiv in 1900, attended the city's Fifth Gymnasium, and began studying the cello there at the age of seventeen with I. V. Petr, a pupil of Julius Klengel.
While an amateur astronomer, Borisyak discovered a nova in the constellation Perseus in 1901 with his friend A. Baranovsky; the article identifies it as the first nova discovered in the twentieth century. He received a Zeiss telescope and was elected to the Russian Astronomical Society, later joining the French Astronomical Society on Camille Flammarion's recommendation. From 1905 to 1908 he studied physics and mathematics at St. Petersburg University while continuing cello lessons with Ya. S. Rosenthal. In 1908 he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the class of Alexander Verzhbilovich, later studying with I. I. Zeyfert when Verzhbilovich became seriously ill. He graduated in spring 1911 with the title of free artist.
Borisyak travelled to Paris for consultations with Pablo Casals in 1912 and 1913. From 1913 to 1918 he taught at the Kharkiv Music School and then at the conservatory, while also appearing chiefly in chamber concerts. His repertoire included sonatas by Handel, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, Anton Rubinstein, and Rachmaninoff, performed with pianists Nikolai Orlov and Elena Bekman-Shcherbina. He also played Saint-Saëns's Cello Concerto with an orchestra conducted by Nikolai Malko in Kharkiv in 1914, and gave sonata recitals with Bekman-Shcherbina in 1917–1918. After settling in Moscow in 1919, he concentrated almost entirely on teaching and later on cello methodology.
For more than forty years Borisyak taught in Moscow music colleges and schools, including institutions named after Scriabin, the Gnesins, Igumnov, and Ippolitov-Ivanov. He trained many cellists who later continued their education at conservatories and entered the profession. With the composer A. M. Dzegelenok, he compiled the five-volume Pedagogical Repertoire for Cello with Piano Accompaniment, published between 1937 and 1940 under the general editorship of Semyon Kozolupov.
His instructional publications included Thumb-Position Exercises for Cello (1929), Essays on the School of Pablo Casals (1929), and Method of the Organic Development of Cello Technique (1934; second edition, 1947). The latter served as his candidate dissertation in art studies, defended in 1944. In 1949 he published Cello School, described as the first domestic cello method. Borisyak also took part in Futurism, publishing the poem “Thunderstorm” and the essay “On the Painting of Music” in Studio of Impressionists in 1910. He died in Moscow on 21 April 1962 after a serious illness.
Organizations
- Kharkiv I. P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts
- Saint Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory
- Kharkiv Lyatoshynsky Music Professional College
- Moscow Regional Basic Music College named after A. N. Scriabin
- Gnessin Music College
- Ippolitov-Ivanov State Musical Pedagogical Institute
- Imperial Saint Petersburg University