Tatiana Goldfarb was a Soviet pianist and teacher, and a prizewinner of the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. She was born on November 27, 1913, in Odessa. She began studying piano with the well-known Odessa teacher David Aisberg, and after his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1925 she later 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 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.
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 to continue her studies at the Moscow Conservatory with Heinrich Neuhaus, who had served on the Warsaw jury.
Her studies with Neuhaus were interrupted in 1941 by the German invasion of the Soviet Union. 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 Soviet troops at the front and for wounded soldiers in military hospitals. In 1945, in Berlin, she took part in a concert dedicated to the end of the Second World War, attended by the commanders of the victorious Allied armies.
In the postwar years 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, including works by Soviet Russian, Ukrainian, and Georgian composers.
Goldfarb performed with the country's leading orchestras. Her symphonic programs included piano concertos by Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, and Grieg, among other major works for piano and orchestra. She also collaborated with prominent Soviet 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 Soviet radio.
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, 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, and 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'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.
Connections
This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.