Boris Berlin was a Soviet pianist, composer, teacher, and professor. He was born on March 8, 1906, in Minsk, in the Russian Empire. In 1992 he was awarded the honorary title Honored Artist of Russia.
His father, Moisey Borisovich, worked at the Russo-Asiatic Bank, and his mother, Sofya Abramovna, was an amateur pianist who gave music lessons. The family had three children: Alexander, Cecilia, and Boris. Before the First World War the family moved to Oryol, where they suffered severe losses: the eldest son Alexander died of diabetes, and soon afterward Sofya Abramovna also died.
Berlin began playing the piano at the age of four, picking out music by ear and improvising. His first teacher, not only in music but also in other subjects, was M. M. Klechkovsky. For some time he also studied at a gymnasium.
In 1922 he entered the Moscow State Conservatory in two departments at once: composition, where he studied with Georgy Conus, Mikhail Gnessin, and Nikolai Myaskovsky, and piano, first in the class of Alexander Gedike and then in the class of Konstantin Igumnov. Alongside his studies he worked at Alexander Tairov's Kamerny Theatre and at the Malaya Dmitrovka cinema, where he accompanied silent films with piano improvisations. In 1931 he graduated from the conservatory and became the first assistant to Igumnov at the Moscow Conservatory.
During the 1920s and 1930s he performed extensively in concert. His repertoire was dominated by works by Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, and especially Scriabin. In 1933 he took part in the First All-Union Competition and reached the final, but because of illness he was unable to perform and soon afterward was forced to give up the concert stage altogether. In 1935 he received the academic title of docent.
From the first days of the Great Patriotic War he served in the people's militia, and later he was evacuated with a group of conservatory teachers and students to Saratov. In February 1942 an evening devoted to the music of Franz Liszt, performed by students from his class, took place in the Great Hall of the Saratov Conservatory. From 1944 until the end of his life Berlin worked at the Gnessin institute, later the Russian Academy of Music named after the Gnessins. From 1973 to 1975 he headed the department of special piano.
Berlin wrote a large number of musical works. His largest piano composition, Eight Pictures on a Russian Theme, dedicated to the memory of Konstantin Igumnov, was published in 1957. As a pedagogue, he trained more than 200 students and exerted a strong influence not only on his own pupils but on many other musicians as well. His teaching combined a vivid, highly original understanding of music with a clear and distinctive system of training performers, continuing the best traditions of the Russian piano school.
His method included ear-training exercises for hearing single sounds and sound combinations, technical work for strengthening the fingers and shaping tone and phrasing, and exercises for developing performing techniques. He placed special emphasis on imaginative thinking and on reading the musical text through the composer's style. His students and colleagues regarded him as an extraordinary personality, and his name came to be counted among the golden heritage of national music pedagogy. Boris Berlin died on August 10, 1995, in Moscow and was buried at the Donskoye Cemetery there.
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