Ilya Aisberg, born Elya Samuilovich Aizberg, was a Russian and Georgian pianist and composer. He was born in Odessa in 1868 and died in Tbilisi in 1942. He was the son of Samuil Aizberg, a sworn attorney and author of brochures on the rights and persecution of Jews in Russia published in Odessa in 1881.
Aisberg graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1892, having studied piano with Karl van Ark. He then continued to refine his pianistic training in Vienna. He concertized and taught in Odessa, where contemporary local criticism already in 1897 praised his excellent technique, varied and expressive playing, strong tone, passionate temperament, and genuine musical commitment.
From 1902 to 1906 he again studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, this time in the composition class of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. From 1906 he taught piano at the music school of the Tiflis branch of the Imperial Russian Musical Society and also appeared as a performer. The Russian Musical Gazette described him as a lyrical pianist whose playing was distinguished by purity of sound, technique, softness of touch, and carefully considered nuance.
After the school was reorganized into the Tbilisi Conservatory in 1917, Aisberg became a professor there. In 1923–1934 he was professor at the Baku Conservatory, and from 1923 to 1928 also served as its rector. From 1934 until the end of his life he was again a professor at the Tbilisi Conservatory. Among his students in Tbilisi were Andria Balanchivadze, Vache Umr-Shat, and Tamara Shaverzashvili.
As a composer, Aisberg wrote a Piano Concerto, Op. 15, published in 1928, and the Sonata-Skazka for piano, Op. 19, published in 1929, as well as numerous piano etudes and romances. His best-known composition is the Jewish Capriccio for piano and orchestra, Op. 20, written in 1917 and published in 1926. Under its original title Jewish Rhapsody, it entered the repertoire of the Zimro ensemble led by Simeon Bellison and was performed at Carnegie Hall on 1 November 1919.
Before the Revolution, Aisberg was a member of the Society for Jewish Folk Music. In 1917 its publishing house issued two of his piano arrangements based on Jewish musical folklore: Wedding Dance and Reb Shmul’s Nigun. He also published articles on piano music and pianistic technique in the journals Muzyka and Muzykalny sovremennik in 1913–1917. During his Baku years he arranged Azerbaijani folk melodies for piano and published articles on problems of musical culture and education, sometimes under the pseudonym Ledogorov.