Leonid Kreutzer
Leonid Kreutzer was a Russian and German pianist and music teacher. He was born on 13 March 1884 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire, into a prosperous Jewish family.
From 1894 to 1901, he attended the secondary-school division of the Petrischule. He subsequently studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Anna Yesipova and Alexander Glazunov.
After completing his studies, Kreutzer taught first in Leipzig, including teaching Leonid Kochansky. From 1921 to 1933 he taught at the Berlin Academy of Music; his pupils there included Sergei Kagen, Bruno Lukk, and Ignaz Strasfogel. Beginning in 1920, he performed with Alexander Schmuler in the New Russian Trio, established in Amsterdam by Joseph Press.
He recorded Antonio Vivaldi's concerto for four keyboards and orchestra with Bruno Eisner, Georg Bertram, and Franz Osborn, accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Heinz Unger. In 1935 he left Germany and returned to Leningrad, where an attempt to obtain a position at the Leningrad Conservatory was unsuccessful. He then moved to Japan.
In 1937 Kreutzer became a professor at the Tokyo School of Music, later the Tokyo University of the Arts. He taught there until 1953 and trained a generation of Japanese musicians, conductors, and composers. In 1952 he married his colleague, the pianist Toyoko Orimoto.
Kreutzer died suddenly during a performance in Tokyo on 30 October 1953. He was buried in Yahashira Cemetery.
His writings included one of the earliest systematic studies of pedal use in piano playing, The Ordinary Piano Pedal from the Acoustic and Aesthetic Standpoint (1915). He also edited an edition of Chopin's works. A sculptural memorial to him stands in front of the Tokyo University of the Arts, and, with Toyoko Orimoto's consent, a piano model manufactured in Japan was named Leo Kreutzer.