Lazar Berman

Lazar Naumovich Berman (Russian: Ла́зарь Нау́мович Бе́рман, Lazarʹ Naumovič Berman; February 26, 1930 – February 6, 2005) was a Soviet Russian classical pianist. He was hailed for a huge, thunderous technique that made him a thrilling interpreter of Liszt and Rachmaninoff and a late representative of the grand school of Russian Romantic pianism.

Berman was appointed an Honoured Artist of the RSFSR in 1988.

Berman was born to Jewish parents in Leningrad. His mother, Anna Lazarevna Makhover, had played the piano herself until prevented by hearing problems. She introduced her son to the piano, he entered his first competition at the age of three, and recorded a Mozart fantasia and a mazurka that he had composed himself at the age of seven, before he could even read music. Emil Gilels described him as a "phenomenon of the musical world". When Berman was nine, the family moved to Moscow so that he could study with Aleksandr Goldenweiser at the Conservatoire. The following year he made his formal debut playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1941, students, pupils and parents were evacuated to Kuibishev, a city on the Volga, because of World War II. Living conditions were so poor that his mother had to cut the fingers from a pair of gloves to allow him to continue to practise without freezing his hands.

His playing of Chopin is well documented, in both a concert film and a DGG recording of the polonaises from the 1970s.

He subsequently began to acquire a small international visibility. At the age of 12 he played Franz Liszt's La campanella to a British audience over the radio; in 1956 he won a prize at the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Belgium, with Vladimir Ashkenazy; and in 1958, he performed in London and recorded for Saga records.

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