Lev Barenboim was a Soviet pianist, musicologist, and music educator. He was born in Odessa in 1906 and died in Leningrad in 1985.
He graduated from the Odessa Conservatory in 1925, where he studied piano with G. M. Bieber. In 1930, he completed his piano studies at the Moscow Conservatory with Felix Blumenfeld. From 1931 to 1939, he taught piano and piano pedagogy at the Moscow Conservatory and worked as a researcher at its music research institute. He joined the Leningrad Conservatory in 1939, became a professor in 1958, and headed its department of piano history and theory from 1965. He earned a doctorate in arts studies in 1957.
Barenboim focused his critical writing on the artistic ideas and imagery expressed by performers. He developed a way of distinguishing performers by their interpretive approach, describing types such as the storyteller, dramatist, painter, and musician whose expressive force leads the audience.
His major books include a two-volume study of Anton Rubinstein and a monograph on Nikolai Rubinstein. He also wrote on piano pedagogy and performance, including Questions of Piano Pedagogy and Performance and The Road to Music-Making, which became a teaching resource for introductory music education. In 1981, he began a book about pianist Emil Gilels but died before completing it; the book was finished by editor T. N. Holland and Elena Gilels and published in 1990.