Boris Goldstein

Boris Goldstein, known as Busya Goldstein, was a Soviet violin prodigy and a German music teacher. He was born on 25 December 1922 in Odessa and died on 8 November 1987 in Hanover. He came from a musical family: he was the brother of the composer, violinist, and musicologist Mikhail Goldstein, and the father of the pianist Yulia Goldstein.

Goldstein studied violin with Pyotr Stolyarsky in Odessa and later with professors Abram Yampolsky and Lev Tseitlin in Moscow. His exceptional talent appeared very early. In 1933, at the age of eleven, he took part in the first All-Union Competition of Performing Musicians in the USSR. According to the article, Stalin was delighted by his playing, invited the young virtuoso to the Kremlin, awarded him a large monetary prize, and the next day Goldstein and his family were given an apartment in a new building in central Moscow.

His extraordinary musical gift and violin mastery were highly praised by major musicians including Fritz Kreisler, Jacques Thibaud, Joseph Szigeti, Carl Flesch, Miron Polyakin, Sergei Prokofiev, and Aram Khachaturian. Goldstein became one of the five laureates of the first Wieniawski Competition in Warsaw in 1935 and of the Ysaÿe Competition in Brussels in 1937. In 1937 he was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour for exceptional achievements in the field of musical art.

From 1974 Goldstein lived in Germany, and from 1976 he was a professor at the Würzburg University of Music. From 1981 he performed in ensemble with his daughter Yulia; together they recorded Johannes Brahms's sonatas for violin and piano. He also maintained friendly relations with the German composer Bertold Hummel and in 1977 gave the first performance of Hummel's Dialogue for violin and organ.

Goldstein was also important as a teacher: one of his students was the violin pedagogue Zakhar Bron. His career united the image of a celebrated Soviet child prodigy with later activity in Germany as a respected musician and pedagogue.

Connections

This figure has 2 connections in the Music Lineage catalog.