Tatiana Goldfarb, born Tauba Iosifovna Goldfarb, was a pianist and teacher, and a prizewinner of the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. She was born on November 27, 1913, in Odessa, Kherson Governorate, into a Jewish family. Her father, Iosif Goldfarb, was an office employee, and her mother, Lea Zeltser, was a homemaker. She began studying piano with the well-known Odessa teacher David Aisberg; after his emigration in 1925, she entered the class of Berta Reingbald, professor at the Odessa Conservatory, from which she graduated in 1932.
At the beginning of her artistic career, Reingbald brought Goldfarb to Moscow in 1932 and introduced her to the Moscow Conservatory professor Heinrich Neuhaus, who recommended that she take part in the First All-Union Competition of Performing Musicians in 1933. In that strong field she received a diploma rather than a top prize. Goldfarb then continued her training in postgraduate study at the Kyiv Conservatory from 1935 to 1938 under Professor Abram Lufer, a prizewinner of the First International Chopin Competition. He recognized her talent and played an important role in shaping her individual performing style, preparing her for the Third International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1937. On April 27, 1937, she was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour for exceptional achievements in musical art.
At the 1937 Chopin Competition, Goldfarb won ninth prize. Her performance there was highly praised by the press and music critics, who particularly noted the dynamism, brilliant technique, artistry, and vivid individuality of her playing. Although she received offers to perform in Europe, she followed Lufer's advice and returned to Moscow, where she studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Heinrich Neuhaus from 1938 to 1941 while maintaining an active concert career. Neuhaus had served on the Warsaw competition jury.
Her studies with Neuhaus were interrupted in 1941. By that time she was already a well-known pianist and a soloist of the Moscow State Philharmonic. During the war years she remained in Moscow and, together with other artists, performed for troops and wounded soldiers in military hospitals.
For nearly three decades Goldfarb maintained an active concert career. Each year she appeared with new solo programs in the concert halls of Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Tbilisi, Riga, Odessa, and other major cities, and toured throughout the Soviet Union. Frédéric Chopin remained the composer closest to her artistic temperament throughout her career, though her repertory was broad and included Beethoven sonatas, Liszt etudes, Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, Brahms miniatures, Schumann's Carnival, and contemporary piano music. In a 1946 assessment of her Chopin interpretations, the critic Alexander Drozdov praised her vivid talent, brilliant technical command, strongly defined interpretations, broad dynamic range, and powerful fortissimo.
Her special affinities also included works by the Ukrainian composers Levko Revutsky and Viktor Kosenko, recalling her formative years in Ukraine. Goldfarb performed with the country's leading orchestras. Her symphonic programs included piano concertos by Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, and, later, Otar Taktakishvili. She collaborated with prominent conductors including Samuil Samosud, Yevgeny Mravinsky, Arvid Jansons, and Kurt Sanderling. Many of her solo and orchestral performances were recorded live in concert halls or studios and broadcast on radio. Her recorded legacy includes Chopin works, Schubert and Liszt pieces, and a 1949 recording with violinist Leonid Kogan of Schubert's Violin Sonatinas Nos. 2 and 3.
In 1958 she began teaching at the Tbilisi Conservatory. Former students recalled her subtle understanding of each student's individuality, her precise selection of repertory, her attention to her pupils, and her principled character. She combined teaching with an ongoing performing career, continuing to appear in solo and symphonic concerts in Moscow and other cities. In Tbilisi she performed both in recital and with the State Symphony Orchestra of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic under its chief conductor Odysseas Dimitriadis.
Goldfarb was married first to the musicologist Moisey Grinberg, artistic director of the Moscow State Philharmonic; their daughter, Maria Grinberg, became a journalist. Her second husband was the cellist and Tbilisi Conservatory professor Alexander Chidzhavadze. Her sister, Ita Goldfarb, was a pianist and teacher at the Gnesin Music and Pedagogical Institute in Moscow, while her brother, Yakov Goldfarb, was a conductor and teacher.
Goldfarb's performing and teaching career ended abruptly with her sudden death after a short illness. She died of allergic shock in Tbilisi on November 17, 1964, at the age of fifty. In an obituary, the musicians Lev Oborin and David Oistrakh wrote that she had been a great and genuine master whose art was always life-affirming, sincere, direct, and full of love for people. She was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
