Feliks Mikhailovich Blumenfeld

Born Apr. 7 (19), 1863, in Kovalevka, Kherson Province; died Jan. 21, 1931, in Moscow. Soviet pianist, conductor, and composer. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1927). A Pole by nationality.

Upon graduating from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1885, Blumenfel’d became a teacher there. From 1897 to 1918 (with interruptions) he was a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and later at the Kiev Conservatory. In 1920 he became director of the Kiev Conservatory and at the same time was director of the Lysenko Music and Drama Institute. In 1922 he became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory.

Blumenfel’d appeared as a piano soloist and as a member of ensembles. (He accompanied F. I. Chaliapin and others.) From 1895 to 1911 he was a conductor at the Mariinskii Theater in St. Petersburg, where he staged several operas by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, including The Legend of the Invisible City Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniia, and R. Wagner. In 1908 he conducted M. P. Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov in Paris. Blumenfel’d composed romances, instrumental chamber works, piano pieces, and the symphony To the Memory of the Dear Departed. He belonged to the Beliaev Circle. Blumenfel’d’s students included V. S. Horowitz, M. I. Grinberg, and A. M. Dubianskii.