ALEXANDER GOLDENWEISER (1875-1961)
Russian pianist

Alexander Goldenweiser was a close friend of Tolstoy and Scriabin.  He was a pupil of Alexander Siloti, Vassily Safonoff and Paul Pabst, and studied composition with Arensky, Taneyev and Ippolitov-Ivanov, all three former students of Tchaikovsky'

At the Moscow Conservatory, he was the teacher of many of the most significant pianists mother Russia was to produce.  The list of these students reads like a veritable who's who of the great Russian pianists of the 20th century: Lazar Berman, Grigory Ginzburg, Samuel Feinberg, Tatiana Nikolayeva, Nikolai Kapustin, Dimitri Bashkirov, Dmitry Kabalevsky, Galina Eguiazarova, Nikolai Petrov, Alexander Braginsky, Sulamita Aronovsky, Dmitry Paperno, Oxana Yablonskaya, Nelly Akopian-Tamarina, Dmitry Blagoy, and many others

Alexander Goldeweiser worked closely with Scriabin.  He was the accompanist for Scriabin's piano concerto, and participated in the founding of the Young Scriabinians in 1909. During Scriabin's lifetime, Goldenweiser was one of the composer's most important championss.

His performance of the Rachmaninoff Melody is a revelation.  What a technique! What a sense of the music!!  The Grieg Lyric Pieces have never been favorites of mine.  They have largely seemed pleasant salon music.  But under Alexander Goldenweiser's fingers, they have taken on a new light and I must say that I have gained a new appreciation for these lovely pieces.

I also find Beethoven to be very exciting, and subtly sensitive when appropriate.  Would that there were more recording of the sonatas.

Toward the end of this page is a recording of Alexander Goldenweiser playing his own Piano Sonata-Fantasia composed in the late 1950s.  While it is a very fine piece, it does not show the genius to be found in the works for piano of Samuil Feinberg the Composer.

Mozart  Piano Sonata 11 in A major, K 331
iii Alla Turca

recorded in 1938