Jurgis Karnavičius
Jurgis Karnavičius was a Lithuanian pianist and music educator. Born in St. Petersburg, he was the son of composer and teacher Jurgis Karnavičius and the father of pianist Jurgis Karnavičius Jr.
He graduated from Kaunas Conservatory in 1933, where he studied piano with Lydia Dauguvietytė, and undertook further training in Berlin and Paris from 1934 to 1938. From 1938 to 1941, he taught piano privately in Kaunas. He taught at Kaunas Conservatory from 1941 to 1949 and at the Lithuanian Conservatory from 1949 to 1993; the latter institution became the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in 1992. He served as its rector from 1949 to 1983 and was appointed professor in 1969.
He worked as an accompanist at the Kaunas Grand Theatre from 1943 to 1944 and the Kaunas State Theatre from 1944 to 1946. He directed the Kaunas Ten-Year Music School in 1947 and the Juozas Gruodis Music School in Kaunas from 1948 to 1949. His students included Jurgis Karnavičius Jr., Mūza Rubackytė, Petras Geniušas, Rūta Ibelhauptienė, Rokas Zubovas, Ramutis Čepinskas, Margarita Dvarionaitė, Borisas Borisovas, Rimantas Janeliauskas, and Edmundas Gedgaudas.
Karnavičius gave solo concerts and served on the juries of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow from 1962 to 1986 and the Herbert von Karajan competitions in Berlin in 1976, Vercelli in 1980, Munich in 1983, and Paris in 1985. He also judged music competitions in Lithuania and chaired the 1982 Čiurlionis Competition in Vilnius. His repertoire included works by J. S. Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis.