Nathan Yefimovich Perelman (19 July [1 August] 1906 – 18 February 2002) was a Soviet and Russian pianist and pedagogue of Jewish origin. He maintained an exceptionally long performing and teaching career and became known both as an interpreter and as a prominent professor at the Leningrad, later Saint Petersburg, Conservatory.
Perelman was born in Zhytomyr, Volhynian Governorate, Russian Empire. He studied in Kyiv with Felix Blumenfeld from 1921 to 1922 and Heinrich Neuhaus from 1921 to 1924, and later in Petrograd-Leningrad with Leonid Nikolayev from 1925 to 1930.
Beginning in 1927, he pursued an active concert life for nearly seventy years, continuing to perform until 1996. He was among the first Soviet musicians to tour abroad, helping to represent Soviet pianism on international stages.
From 1937 to 2002 he taught at the Leningrad–Saint Petersburg Conservatory, receiving the title of professor in 1957. Alongside his pedagogical work, he created concert transcriptions for piano, including Mussorgsky’s choral piece “Raskhodilas-Razgulyalas” (1932), Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” (1932), and the waltz from Prokofiev’s opera “War and Peace” (1957).
Perelman also became a familiar public figure through Leningrad television, where he hosted a series titled “Conversations at the Piano.” He authored the well-known book of aphorisms “In the Piano Class,” later published in a 2016 edition prepared by N. Enukidze. The book includes the saying, “Nothing distances one from perfection as much as inexactness.” A poem by Alexander Kushner, “To call him, to say what it means…,” was dedicated to him and published in Znamya in 1998.
In Saint Petersburg he lived for a long time at 63 Tchaikovsky Street. He died in Saint Petersburg, Russia, at the age of ninety-five and was buried at the Preobrazhensky Jewish Cemetery. Posthumous publications connected with him include “Nathan Perelman. Conversations at the Piano. Memoirs. Letters,” compiled by F. Bryanskaya and E. Movchan and issued in Moscow in 2013.
