Rudolf Barshai

1924 (Labinskaya) — 2010 (Basel)

Rudolf Barshai was a Soviet and Israeli violist and conductor, and was also identified as a composer. He was born on September 28, 1924, in Labinskaya, in the Krasnodar region. He studied violin at a music school in Kalinin and at the music school attached to the Leningrad Conservatory, then graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1948, where he studied viola with Vadim Borisovsky.

From 1945, Barshai played viola in the Moscow Philharmonic Quartet, later known as the Borodin Quartet. He performed with musicians including Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, Leonid Kogan, Yehudi Menuhin, and Gregor Piatigorsky. In 1956, he founded the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the first chamber orchestra in the Soviet Union, and led and conducted it until 1977.

After moving to Israel in 1977, Barshai led the Israel Chamber Orchestra. From 1979 he lived in Switzerland and worked with orchestras across Europe and North America. He headed the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra from 1981 to 1983 and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 1982 to 1988. He also conducted the Orchestre National de France and appeared with soloists including Thomas Allen, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Isaac Stern, and Janet Baker.

Barshai’s conducting repertoire included works by Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn, Handel, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Béla Bartók, Shostakovich, Mieczysław Weinberg, Boris Tchaikovsky, and Alexander Lokshin. His arrangements included string-orchestra versions of several Shostakovich quartets and Prokofiev’s piano pieces Visions fugitives. He completed the final fugue of Bach’s The Art of Fugue and Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. His recordings of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Shostakovich’s fifteen symphonies received awards in 1988 and 2003. The University of Southampton awarded him an honorary doctorate in music in 1986.

Barshai died in Basel on November 2, 2010, aged 86.

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