Oleksandr Lazarovych Eidelman (Edelman) (7 June 1902, Gostomel - 31 October 1995, New York) was a pianist and teacher. Professor (1941).
Biography.
In 1923, he graduated from the Kyiv Conservatory (piano class of F. Blumenfeld, M. Dombrowsky, H. Neuhaus).
In 1929, he graduated from the Mykola Lysenko State Music and Drama Institute (piano department of the instructor-pedagogical faculty).
In 1925-1941 he was a soloist of the Ukrainian Philharmonic.
In 1931, he won the first prize and the title of Laureate at the All-Ukrainian Piano Competition.
From 1925 he taught at the Kyiv Conservatory (in 1934-1941 he was an associate professor).
On 21 June 1941, the day before the outbreak of war, he was awarded the academic title of Professor of Piano.
In 1941-1943, he was a professor at the united Moscow and Saratov Conservatories.
1943-1950 - Professor at the Kyiv Conservatoire.
From 1950-1978 he was a professor at the Lviv Conservatory, head of the special piano department.
Since 1978 he has lived in the United States. Professor at the New York University.
Performing and pedagogical activity
О. Eidelman belongs to the best representatives of the golden period of the Kyiv piano school, along with V. Horowitz and H. Neuhaus, with whom he was in close contact in his youth.
In the 1920s and 1930s, he performed regularly in Kyiv and Soviet Ukraine, and his victory at the All-Ukrainian Competition opened up the possibility of touring the entire Soviet Union. The pianist performed in Belarus and Russia, including 15 concerts in Moscow and 22 concerts in Leningrad. He also visited Siberia and travelled to the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. In composing his concert programmes, he adhered to the monographic principle, in particular, he played entire cycles of compositions by Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, and Debussy. He also performed works by Ukrainian composers Kosenko, Revutskyi, and Stepovyi.
After the war, painfully traumatised by the deaths of his relatives in Babyn Yar, O. Eidelman stopped giving concerts and focused on teaching. He was a talented teacher, one of the last representatives of romantic piano pedagogy. He had a great influence on the pianism of Lviv and Western Ukraine in general, where he left behind a whole generation of highly professional pianists and teachers, including K. Huchua, A. Pushkar-Zaderatska, Y. Chornak, Maria and Lidia Krykh, K. Kolessa, E. Turovska, H. Skovronska, O. Kacheva, T. Starukh, Y. Hurdeieva, L. Spiryahina, P. Yurzhenko, H. Humetska, and T. Sliusar. Methodological principles of teaching were developed in other cities of the then USSR by V. Barber, I. Tsarevych, V. Daich, Z. Zucker, L. Vakarina, M. Burtsev, O. Saigushkina, and Y. Polubelov.
In the United States, O. Eidelman was known as a carrier of a great piano tradition, and pianists of different nationalities, including J.-E. Bavouze, B. Bloch, U. Dunshe, H. Kitayima, Y. Osinchuk, D. Rachmanov, and I. Reichelson, sought his instruction. But perhaps the professor's best and most faithful student was his son Serhiy Edelman, a laureate of international competitions and professor at music academies in Tokyo and Amsterdam.
