David Berthier

David Berthier was a Russian and Ukrainian Soviet violinist, conductor, and pedagogue. He was born David Solomonovich Livshits on May 31, 1882, in Litin, Podolia Governorate, into the family of a merchant. He studied at the First Kyiv Gymnasium, graduated from the Music Institute in Warsaw in 1901 in the violin class of Stanisław Barcewicz, and completed his studies at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1904 in the class of Leopold Auer; he also studied composition there with Nikolai Sokolov.

From 1904 he worked in Saint Petersburg as a player and later concertmaster of the symphony orchestra of the Sheremetev Musical-Historical Society. He appeared as a soloist and ensemble musician and also taught at the Petersburg People's Conservatory.

From 1918 Berthier lived in Kyiv. There he served as concertmaster and conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra, led the Philharmonic String Quartet, and taught at the N. V. Lysenko Kyiv Music and Drama Institute. In the second half of the 1920s he was part of the organizational group behind Kyivsymphans, a conductorless symphony orchestra founded in 1926 on the model of Moscow's Persimfans.

Beginning in 1920 he taught at the Kyiv Conservatory, and from 1922 he was a professor there. Between 1924 and 1928 he was vice-rector of the music institute and music technical school. He trained many Ukrainian violinists, including O. M. Parkhomenko, Abram Stern, V. K. Stetsenko, and N. Kh. Loznik; the actor Leonid Bronevoy also studied violin with Professor Berthier in childhood.

In 1941 Berthier was evacuated together with the conservatory, and after the war he returned to Kyiv. He was named Honored Professor of the Ukrainian SSR in 1932 and Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1938. In the same year he received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour for his outstanding services in training musical personnel for Soviet Ukraine in connection with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Kyiv State Conservatory.

Berthier died in Kyiv on May 18, 1950, and was buried there. He is remembered as an important violin teacher and orchestral musician in Kyiv's Soviet musical life.

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