Simon Barere (20 August (1 September) 1896, Odesa - 2 April 1951, New York) was a Ukrainian, Russian and American pianist.
Biography.
He was born into a large Jewish family, in which he was the eleventh child. From the age of 11, he earned a living for himself and his family as a tapper. He graduated from the St Petersburg Conservatoire with Anna Esipova and Felix Blumenfeld. After graduating from the Conservatoire, he gave concerts in many Russian cities.
From 1919 he taught at the Kyiv Conservatoire. In 1929, he was appointed cultural attaché at the USSR mission in Latvia, from where he emigrated to Germany in 1932 and to Sweden a year later, after the Nazis came to power. In 1934, he made his debut in London, performing Tchaikovsky's First Concerto with the orchestra conducted by Thomas Beecham; in 1936, he made his first appearance at Carnegie Hall.
From 1939 he lived and worked in the United States. He died during a concert from a brain haemorrhage.
One of his most famous performances is Franz Liszt's Sonata in B minor, recorded in 1947 and released by Remington Records in 1950.
