Mykhailo Emmanuilovych Goldstein (pseudonym Mykhailo Mykhailovskyi; November 8, 1917, Odesa - September 7, 1989, Hamburg) was a Ukrainian, later German composer and violin virtuoso, conductor, music educator, musicologist; a master of musical stylizations. Brother of the famous violinist Borys Goldstein.
He was born in the family of a math teacher. He received his first violin lessons at the age of four. At the age of five, he gave his first concert performance on stage, and at the age of eight he made his debut as a soloist accompanied by a symphony orchestra. He studied music at the school of Petro Stolyarsky, and later at the Odesa and Moscow Conservatories under professors A. I. Yampolsky, Mykola Myaskovsky (composition) and K.S. Saradzhov (conducting).
Since 1936, he worked as a teacher at the Stolyarsky School in Odesa. Since 1948, he has taught at various music universities in Moscow.
After an injury to his left hand, he turned to teaching and composing. M. Goldstein is the author of numerous symphonic and instrumental works, and also posed as the author of such a famous musical work as the 21st Symphony of the composer M. D. Ovsyanyko-Kulikovsky (Ukrainian Symphony in g-moll in the old style of M. Kulikovsky), as well as the author of the musical mystification "Balakirev's Impromptu" and others.
In 1957, a criminal case was initiated against him by the investigative bodies of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs regarding the authorship of the above-mentioned musical works, in particular, Goldstein gave explanations for the appearance of the manuscript of the aforementioned symphony, which bore the inventory number of the Odesa Opera.
In 1963, Mykhailo Goldstein won three awards under pseudonyms at the All-Union Competition for Young Composers for his works for violin and cello. He submitted all the works under different pseudonyms (Soviet Culture, 1/12/1963). After the discovery of his authorship, he was in serious trouble with the Soviet authorities. In 1964, he was forced to emigrate from the USSR.
In 1964-1967 he was a professor at the Conservatory in East Berlin;
In 1967 he moved to Vienna and later to Israel, where he taught at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem;
1968-1969 he was a guest lecturer at the Yehudi Menuhin School in London;
From 1969 to 1988 he was a professor at the Hamburg Conservatory.
Goldstein frequently published articles on Ukrainian music in Ukrainian diaspora newspapers (especially in the Munich-based OUN(b) newspaper "Shliakh Peremohy") under the pseudonym Mykhailo Mykhailovskyi.
Goldstein's life and professional slogan was: "Music helps to cross state borders." In 1984, he was awarded the German Order of the Cross of Merit for his musical and pedagogical work and social activism in support of immigrants and the disabled.
Mikhail Goldstein's first marriage was to Mariana Rabin. His daughter Lidia Markovych (Goldstein) is a concertmaster, violinist, and music teacher. His grandson, Oleksandr Markovych, is a pianist.
M. Goldstein was buried in 1989 in Hamburg at the Olsdorf Cemetery.
The Ovsianyk-Kulikowski Symphony
Goldstein's most famous musical hoax was the Symphony No. 21 by Mykola Ovsianyko-Kulikovsky. According to Goldstein's recollections, he was inspired to write this work after conversations with Isaac Dunayevsky and theater critic Vsevolod Chahovets. Having written a stylization of music from the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Goldstein attributed it to the landowner Ovsianyko-Kulykovsky, the grandfather of philologist Dmytro Ovsianyko-Kulykovsky, who kept a serf orchestra in Odesa and donated it to the opera house in 1810.
According to Goldstein, Ovsianyko-Kulykovsky's work came in handy at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, when Soviet cultural policy was aimed at establishing its own original sources. The symphony was performed by leading Soviet music ensembles, including the Leningrad Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Yevgeny Mravinsky. At the insistence of musicologist Valerian Dovzhenko, who had published an article about Ovsianyko-Kulykivsky and intended to write a book, Goldstein even came up with a more detailed biography, including the years of his life (1768-1846). The article about Ovsianyko-Kulikovsky was included in the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
In 1959, the hoax was publicly exposed in a feuilleton by Jan Polishchuk in the Literary Gazette.
