Lazar Berman - 1939-2005
From Andrea Hentschke
Arts Music
Dear Friends and colleagues:
The surprising news of Lazar Bermans
death came to our ears yesterday. He
died on February 6th, only a few days
before his 75 th birthday.
Lazar Berman was born in Leningrad
in 1930. As a pupil of Alexander
Goldenweiser at the Moscow Conservatory,
he was influenced by great
musicians like Sviatoslav Richter and
Vladimir Sofronitsky. For a long time
he was known as a greatly admired piano
player only in the Soviet Union and
other Eastern European countries. He
was able to play the last movement of
Chopin's B flat minor Sonata in less
than fifty seconds.
His triumphant career in the western
countries took place in the mid
seventies. The American concert agent
Jaques Leiser incidentally discovered
his recording of the Études d´exécution
transcendante from Liszt and shortly
declared him the only true successor
of Gilels and Richter. It only took
him
a few months to prove him right. On
his concerts, that were always booked
out, his audience was all the time thrilled
by his musical interpretations
and his great, romantic style.
The great concerthalls, conductors
and label companys simply did everything
to get the chance to make concerts and
recordings with this prodigy from the
east. Within a few month, he had made
numerous outstanding and worldwide
known recordings, among them also the
Tchaikovsky concerts with Herbert von
Karajan.
In the year 1980, only a few years
after the beginning of his great break
through in the west, the sensational
career of Lazar Berman suddenly
stopped. An illegal book found by the
Soviet customs in Bermans luggage,
was to become his doom. For four years
the UDSSR did not allow him to leave
the country. Too short to completely
be forgotten but long enough to not
being able to tie in with his world
career once again. After that time Lazar
Berman had to start almost from the
beginning.
Lazar Berman moved to Italy in 1990
and had been an Italian citizen since
1994. There, he taught at the Music
Conservatory in Imola and encouraged
young talent with great enthusiasm.
In 1995, he took on a guest
professorship for two semesters at the
music conservatory in Weimar.
ARTS regrets the loss of this great
and talented piano player very much.
And
even more as ARTS have just released
on the Archives series an unpublished
recording of Liszt's first Piano Concerto,
conducted by another great
personality, Peter Maag (ARTS ARCHIVES
43041-2 - to be reviewed).
As a result of this sad occurrence
we declared this recording "CD
of the
month". Please have a look on our
website
for more details. Furthermore we want
to celebrate his artistry with this
wonderful performance: he was and he
will always remain a great pianist.
Andrea Hentschke
product manager
ARTS MUSIC
