Heinrich Neuhaus Web Site

WHO WE ARE
WHO IS NEUHAUS


visitors since October, 16th, 2000

Heinrich Neuhaus is a legendary musician and pianist. Up to some year ago we would have added "Soviet". But we are today a little bit in embarrassment defining this man, born in Ukraine from German father and Polish mother, who lived in Pietrograd, Kiev, Georgia and Moscow, pupil of Leopold Godowsky, merely a Russian. Perhaps it is more correct to consider him as belonging to a universal culture.

His students, of all nationalities, are scattered around the whole world: United States, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Japan.

Neufream_60_dpi.JPG (4312 byte)Here, in an unpublished photo, Neuhaus is surrounded by students of various countries of the world. From left to the right: Gérard Frémy (France), Gabriel Amiras  (Romania), Snezhanka Barova (Bulgaria), Maria Vlad (Romania), Lenina Popova (Russia), Maria Kruscelnycka.

His students, among which great pianists like Sviatoslav Richter, the Romanian Radu Lupu, the French Gérard Fremy, the Czech Zdenek Hnat, the Bulgarian Ganev, Lazarova, the Hungarian Gaby Amiras, and so many ex-Soviets, continue to spread the teaching and to remember him. Many of his students have operated and continue to operate in Russia, such as Emil Gilels, Jakov Zak, Anatolij Vedernikov, his son Stanislav Neuhaus, Teodor Gutman, Evgenij Malinin, Lev Naumov, Vera Gornostaeva, Vladimir Krajnev, Evgenij Mogilevskij and many others. Some of them wanted to accomplish a far-reaching achievement. Esja Elinajte has established an Association Heinrich Neuhaus in Switzerland. Elisso Wirsaladze has annually organized In Georgia a Festival devoted to Heinrich Neuhaus - until the civil war made it impossible.

In Italy our musical manager Valerij Voskobojnikov, another Heinrich and Stanislav Neuhaus pupil, with a group of young pupils, promoted an Association in 1990 to further develop a set of cultural activities around Neuhaus that he had already developed various years before. In 1985 he edited one of the books written by Heinrich Neuhaus "The art of Piano playing" for the Italian publisher Rusconi. On "Piano Time" he edited "The unpublished Pasternak" (about the relationships between the Russian writer and Heinrich Neuhaus). In collaboration with RAI in 1981 he devoted a cycle of transmissions to the pianistic art of  Neuhaus. In the past year with the Chigiana Academy he devoted to Neuhaus father and son a touching recollection "In souvenir of Stanislav Neuhaus".
It is important to recall that, for almost twenty years, master classes are held in Rome, Palermo, Asolo, Siena, Perugia, in which Stanislav Neuhaus himself, Vera Gornostaeva, Lev Naumov and Valerij Voskobojnikov teach piano.
For many years the Neuhaus Association has promoted festivals first at the Musical Instruments Museum in Rome (Piazza Santa Croce in Gerusalemme) then at the Romania Academy, and finally at the American Academy in Rome. In 1990 in a program of sharp Russian flavor he made the audience listen to some unpublished excerpts, among which the work of Boris Pasternak (whose musical activity as a composer is almost completely unknown out from Russia). In 1991 the cycle devoted to Prokofiev, in the centennial of his birth, showed for the first time works and authors contemporary to him, such as Mjaskovskji and Mosolov, which are very loved in Russia, but almost completely unknown to us. We also have not neglected to promote Italian contemporary composers, such as Aldo Clementi, Stefano Pelegatti, Donato Russo, Lino Liviabella, Luca Lombardi, Ugalberto De Angelis, Sylvano Bussotti, besides the famous Hungarian Georgy Ligeti, the Russian Sofia Gubaidulina. Besides the organization of festivals, we promoted a competition for young pianists, piano Master classes held by Gérard Frémy, Valerij Voskobojnikov, De Moura Castro, Anatolij Katz. In 1996, finally, the Association promoted at the American Academy in Rome a Master class-audition for string quartets, held by the Borodin Quartet.

The Association is now shut down, but a group of active supporters yet takes initiatives in order to spread the teaching of the Maestro. This site is one of this initiatives.