Vissarion Slonim

b. 1921 (Petrograd) · d. 2005 (Jerusalem)

Vissarion (Iser) Isaakovich Slonim (January 6, 1921–February 5, 2005) was a pianist, music teacher, and composer. He was a professor at the Leningrad, Tashkent, Novosibirsk, and Petrozavodsk conservatories and the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. His teaching contributed to the development of piano pedagogy in the 20th century.

Born in Petrograd to a family of academic researchers, Slonim received his first music lessons at home from S. Lyakhovitskaya, from the age of six to twelve. In 1933 he joined a group for exceptionally gifted children at the Leningrad Conservatory and, in 1936, entered its newly opened specialized secondary music school. He studied piano with Professor Olga Kalantarova from 1933 until graduating with honors from the conservatory in 1943. He also attended I. A. Braudo’s Bach seminar and Vladimir Sofronitsky’s seminar on Romantic music. In 1945 he completed composition studies with Professor Maximilian Steinberg.

Slonim worked as an assistant and then a piano instructor at the Leningrad Conservatory from 1944 to 1951. He taught at the Tashkent Conservatory from 1951 to 1958 and again from 1959 to 1961, becoming an associate professor in 1954 and head of its special piano department in 1957. His appointments at the Novosibirsk Conservatory included 1958–59, 1961–69, and 1977–89; from 1969 to 1977 he taught at the Petrozavodsk Conservatory. In 1989 he became a professor at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

As a performer, Slonim appeared in Leningrad as a soloist and chamber musician and played with symphony orchestras led by Nikolai Rabinovich, Karl Eliasberg, and other conductors. In Central Asia, he toured and performed in Tashkent, Moscow, and Leningrad. He later undertook major performance projects in Novosibirsk and regularly appeared with the Karelia Television and Radio Symphony Orchestra. His repertoire included piano concertos by Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Brahms, Grieg, Liszt, Saint-Saëns, and Tchaikovsky, as well as works by contemporary composers. His solo programs ranged from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Chaconne to Beethoven sonatas, Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, Debussy’s Images, and works by Chopin, Prokofiev, Scriabin, Shostakovich, Schumann, and Stravinsky. He performed much violin repertoire with David Oistrakh, with whom he maintained a longstanding artistic friendship.

Slonim continued to perform in Israel, giving solo recitals in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Netanya and taking part in concerts at the Jerusalem International Festival. He marked his 75th birthday by performing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s First, and his 80th with two solo recitals. His last solo concert was in 2002, at age 81; its program traced the development of piano music from the 18th century to the turn of the 20th. He continued to appear in mixed programs and gave his final performance in autumn 2004, playing Schubert waltzes and German dances.

In 1956 Slonim defended a dissertation in Moscow on Brahms’s Piano Sonata in F minor. His compositions included three piano concertos, an overture for symphony orchestra, pieces for piano and other instruments, and arrangements of folk songs, some published for use in music schools. He also wrote methodological works on interpretation, musical phrasing, and the performance of Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin.

As a teacher and head of the special piano department at the Novosibirsk Conservatory, Slonim developed the department and led master classes, concerts, lectures, and educational work across Siberia. His teaching emphasized close reading of the score and shaping musical expression through phrasing and physical movement. Among his students were Mikhail Boguslavsky, Mikhail Shaviner, Sergei Tikhonov, and Frantisek Kratochvil. In 2000 he published Thoughts and Observations, presenting his principles of piano teaching.

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