Zara Levina was a Soviet pianist and composer. She was born in Simferopol in a family headed by the owner of a small shop who was also an amateur violinist; her mother was a teacher of the deaf who taught Russian language in a school for deaf-mute children.
She studied at a gymnasium in Alexandrovsk and then at the Odessa Conservatory with Bronislava Dronseiko-Mironovich, where she became acquainted with B. M. Reingbald. During the years when the Levins lived at 3 Nezhinskaya Street in Odessa, their apartment was visited in 1920–1921 by Isaiah Braudo; Boris Shekhter also lived in the courtyard of the same building, and through him Levina soon met Alexander Davidenko.
In 1925 she was admitted to the composition department of the Moscow Conservatory, in the class of Reinhold Gliere. At the entrance examination she presented her Fourth Sonata. At the same time she was accepted as a piano teacher at the Scriabin Technical School, where Dmitry Kabalevsky was also teaching. Soon Levina additionally studied piano under Felix Blumenfeld and composition under Nikolai Myaskovsky.
While studying at the conservatory, she joined the Production Collective of Student Composers of the Moscow Conservatory, a creative group founded by Alexander Davidenko. In 1929 she moved to the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians, where she was subjected to persecution and harassment, including because of her performances of classical music. For her graduation examination she wrote Poem about Lenin for orchestra, choir, and soloists to words by Alexei Surkov.
The years after her graduation from the conservatory in 1932 and the liquidation of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians were filled with active creative work and friendships with Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian, Samuil Feinberg, and other prominent musicians. During this period she married Nikolai Chemberdzhi.
Levina's principal works include two piano concertos, two piano sonatas, two sonatas for violin and piano, a Jewish Rhapsody for piano in memory of her father, and piano pieces. She also wrote more than 200 romances to poems by Pushkin and Lermontov, Sergei Yesenin, Samuil Marshak, Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, Avetik Isaakyan, Silva Kaputikyan, Ovsei Driz, and others, as well as songs for children to poems by Emma Moshkovskaya.
A number of Levina's vocal works were recorded by Zara Dolukhanova, Natalia Shpiller, and Viktoria Ivanova, with the composer accompanying; her First Violin Sonata was recorded by David Oistrakh, and her pieces for cello by Sviatoslav Knushevitsky. In 1967 she was awarded the title Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
Levina died in Moscow on June 27, 1976, and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery. Her first husband was the satirical poet Mikhail Kossovsky; her second husband was the composer Nikolai Chemberdzhi, and their daughter was the memoirist and translator Valentina Chemberdzhi.
Connections
This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.