Lazar Berman was a Soviet and Italian pianist. Born in Leningrad on 26 February 1930 into a Jewish family, he began studying piano at the age of two under his mother’s guidance. At a citywide Leningrad competition for young talents, a jury chaired by Professor Leonid Nikolayev recognized his exceptional musical and pianistic gifts. Considered a child prodigy, he became a pupil of Samariy Savshinsky, a professor at the Leningrad Conservatory, at the age of four.
In 1939 Berman’s family moved to Moscow, where he studied with Alexander Goldenweiser at the Central Music School and subsequently at the Moscow Conservatory, graduating in 1953. While undertaking postgraduate studies, he won prizes at the Queen Elisabeth International Piano Competition in Brussels and the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest in 1956. These successes led to foreign concert engagements and recordings, including Liszt sonatas and Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata.
Although he continued to perform and record in the Soviet Union during the 1960s, Berman’s recordings for Melodiya included Liszt’s complete Transcendental Études, among the first Soviet recordings to employ stereo technology. From the mid-1970s he again appeared internationally to considerable acclaim. Recordings from this period included Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
In 1968 he married the pianist and music teacher Valentina Sedova. Their son, Pavel Berman, born in 1970, became a violinist and conductor. Lazar Berman frequently performed with his son.
In August 1990 Berman moved first to Norway and later to Italy. He became an Italian citizen four years later and was invited to teach at the Weimar Academy of Music the following year, remaining on its faculty until 2000. He was named Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1988 and was appointed a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France.
Berman was regarded by critics as one of the leading Soviet pianists, often placed alongside Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter. His interpretations of Liszt—especially the complete Years of Pilgrimage and Transcendental Études—as well as music by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, and other composers, were highly successful both in his homeland and abroad. His playing was distinguished by formidable virtuosity and a profound sense of style. He worked with conductors including Eugene Ormandy, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Claudio Abbado, and Herbert von Karajan, and recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, CBS, EMI, and other major labels.
Lazar Berman died in Florence on 6 February 2005 and was buried in the cemetery of the San Miniato monastery in Florence.