Semyon Snitkovsky, also known as Solomon Snitkovsky, was a Soviet violinist and music teacher. He was born on 9 August 1933 in Odesa and died on 4 April 1981 in Moscow, aged 47. He was named an Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1975.
In 1940, Snitkovsky began violin studies at the renowned Pyotr Stolyarsky Music School. During the first days of the Second World War, he was evacuated with his mother and younger brother to Samarkand. He resumed his interrupted education in 1946, entering the class of violin teacher Vladimir Mordkovich, later a professor at the Odesa Conservatory. Snitkovsky gave his first solo recital in 1949 and entered the Odesa Conservatory in 1951, again studying with Mordkovich. In the early 1950s he became a soloist with the Odesa Philharmonic.
In 1956, after appearing at a presentation of outstanding graduates of Ukrainian music institutions, he was invited to Lviv as a philharmonic soloist and conservatory teacher. The following year he entered postgraduate study at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of David Oistrakh. He also became Oistrakh's assistant there, later serving as an associate professor and ultimately as professor of violin.
Snitkovsky won a prize at the All-Union Competition in 1957 and received a bronze medal for his participation in the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow. At the 1958 young performers' competition in Bucharest, held within the George Enescu International Festival, he shared first prize with the Romanian violinist Ștefan Ruha. In the associated competition for the best performance of Enescu's demanding Third Sonata for Violin and Piano, he and pianist O. Stupakova won second prize. He was also awarded second prize at the Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition in Brussels in 1963.
His repertoire included twentieth-century works by Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Bartók, Hindemith, Britten, and Villa-Lobos. He also performed music by Soviet composers including Aram Khachaturian, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Mieczysław Weinberg, and Vadim Salmanov, including recent works and pieces written especially for him. He appeared with major orchestras and conductors, among them Nathan Rakhlin, André Cluytens, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, and Karel Ančerl.
A professor at the Moscow Conservatory, Snitkovsky also became professor of violin at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest in 1976. He gave master classes and teaching courses in various countries. In 2008, marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth, the Melodiya label issued a CD set of selected recordings of his performances of works by Bach, Paganini, Schumann, Schubert, Liszt, Bartók, Stravinsky, Karen Khachaturian, Ysaÿe, Debussy, and others.
