Vitaly Margulis
Vitaly Margulis was a pianist, musicologist, and music teacher. He began studying music in Kharkiv with his father, who had studied with Alexander Horowitz, a student of Scriabin. Margulis graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory in 1951, where he studied with S. I. Savshinsky.
After working in Sverdlovsk for several years, Margulis returned to Leningrad in 1958 and taught at the conservatory until 1974. That year he moved to Rome, where the German harpsichordist Stanislav Heller heard him perform and invited him to Germany. From 1975, Margulis was a professor at the Freiburg University of Music; in 1994, he joined the University of California, Los Angeles.
As a musicologist, Margulis researched the philosophical and symbolic meanings of music by Bach and Beethoven. His work The Well-Tempered Clavier of Bach and Visual Church Symbolism drew wide attention among music professionals. His book On the Interpretation of Beethoven's Piano Works was published in Moscow in 1991. In 2003 he published Bagatelles, a collection of aphorisms, and in 2006 a collection of autobiographical essays, Paraleipomena: Novellas from a Musician's Life.
Margulis's students became laureates of international competitions more than a hundred times, with 28 receiving top awards. His students included Grigory Gruzman, Philippe Bianconi, Bernd Glemser, and Andreas Frölich.