Heinrich Neuhaus - Life and Career

Life and Career

He was born in Elisavetgrad (known since 1939 as Kirovohrad), in present-day Ukraine. Although both his parents were piano teachers, he was largely self-taught. The biggest influences on his early artistic development came from his second cousin Karol Szymanowski (tutored by Heinrich's father, Gustav Neuhaus) and especially his uncle Felix Blumenfeld on his visits to his sisters' home. He also received some lessons from Aleksander Michałowski. In 1902 he gave a recital in Elisavetgrad with the 11-year-old Mischa Elman and in 1904 gave concerts in Dortmund, Bonn, Cologne and Berlin. Subsequently he studied with Leopold Godowsky in Berlin and from 1909 until the outbreak of World War I at his master classes in Vienna Academy of Music.

In 1914 Neuhaus started teaching in Elisavetgrad and later Tbilisi (Tiflis) and Kiev (where he befriended Vladimir Horowitz). After having been temporarily paralyzed, Neuhaus was forced to halt his concert career in the interests of his pedagogical activities. In 1922 he began teaching at the Moscow Conservatory where he was also director between 1935 and 1937. When the Germans approached Moscow in 1941, he was imprisoned as a "German spy" but released eight months later under pressure from Dmitri Shostakovich, Emil Gilels and others. His pupils there included Yakov Zak, Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Anatoly Vedernikov, Tikhon Khrennikov, Yevgeny Malinin, Lev Naumov, Tamara Guseva, Ryszard Bakst, Teodor Gutman, Vera Gornostayeva, Alexander Slobodyanik, Leonid Brumberg, Igor Zhukov, Oleg Boshniakovich, Anton Ginsburg, Valery Kastelsky, Gérard Frémy, Zdeněk Hnát, Nina Svetlanova, Eliso Virsaladze, Alexei Lubimov, Aleksey Nasedkin, Vladimir Krainev, Berta Maranz, Evgeny Mogilevsky, Amalya Baiburtyan and Radu Lupu.