Isaac Israelovich Paine (21 January 1912, Kyiv - 16 December 1999, New York, USA) was a conductor, teacher, musician, Honoured Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1957), Associate Professor (1966).
Biography.
Isaac Pain was born in Kyiv into a family of doctors. His first piano teacher was Hanna Davydivna Taugman, and later Olga Oleksandrivna Trinitatska. In 1932, he graduated from the Mykola Lysenko Kyiv Music and Drama Institute (piano class - Konstantin Mykhailov, conducting - David Bertier, music theory classes - Borys Liatoshynskyi, Lev Revutskyi, Viktor Kosenko). From 1931, he worked as a conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of the Mykola Lysenko Institute, the Symphony Orchestra of the Radio Committee in Kyiv, and as a lecturer at the Kyiv Conservatory. In October 1939, he was sent to Lviv to organise music broadcasting on Lviv Radio.
Together with Mykola Kolesa, he organised an orchestra at the Lviv Regional Radio Committee (6 December 1939), which initially consisted of 52 people and began working with this composition. By February 1940, the orchestra's membership was increased to 70 people. The first state symphony orchestra in Lviv was reorganised into the orchestra of the Lviv Philharmonic. During the first 2.5 months of its existence, the orchestra gave 16 concerts, which featured works by Ukrainian composers Lev Revutsky, Borys Liatoshynsky, Viktor Kosenko, Vasyl Barvinsky, Stanislav Liudkevych, and Mykola Kolessa alongside foreign and Soviet classics. Before the outbreak of World War II, the orchestra featured such well-known performers as Roman Savytskyi (piano), Leopold Münzer (piano), Eva Bandrovska-Turska (soprano), Mikhail Fichtenholz (violin), Abram Lufer (piano), and many others.
Since 1941, Isaac Paine has been fighting at the front. In 1946, he returned with military awards and resumed his creative work at the Lviv Philharmonic, was the chief conductor and director of the symphony orchestra, and taught at the conducting department of the Lviv Conservatory until 1993. Together with the Lviv Symphony Orchestra, he performed in numerous concerts, including with prominent national and foreign musicians of the time, and made fundamental recordings on radio and television. Under his leadership, the Lviv Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra became one of the best musical ensembles in Ukraine. During his teaching career, Isaac Paine taught many gifted students, including composers Platon and Heorhiy Mayboroda, Arkady Filipenko, Vadym Homolyaka, and others. Among the first graduates were Mykola Khivrych, chief conductor of the Kyiv Radio Folk Instruments Orchestra, Semen Arbit, conductor of the Lviv Opera and Ballet Theatre, G. Orlov, conductor of the Novosibirsk Opera. Orlov, Chief Conductor of the Variety Symphony Orchestra of Radio and Television Rostyslav Babych (Kyiv), Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of the Ivan Franko National University Roman Khabal, Head of the Orchestral Conducting Department of the Lviv State Music Academy Professor Oleksandr Herynovych, and others. Since 1993, Isaac Paine has lived in New York (USA).
Creative work
For fifty years (from 1939 to 1993 with a break for the years of war), Isaac Paine led the Lviv Symphony Orchestra. The programmes of world, Ukrainian and Soviet classical music conducted by I. Pain were always a great success among listeners and professionals, who noted the high level of conducting skills and faithful musical interpretation.
He performed monumental works in Lviv: the oratorios "Creation of the World" and "Seasons" by Joseph Haydn, Requiem by Hector Berlioz and Giuseppe Verdi, Missa solemnis by Ludwig Beethoven, Bells by Sergei Rachmaninoff, John Damascene, and After the Psalm by Sergei Taneev, Symphonies by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Beethoven, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Boris Lyatoshinsky, Lev Revutsky, and others. Isaac Paine was a brilliant accompanist, and world-renowned soloists performed with him, including Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Daniil Shafran, Tatiana Nikolaeva, Stanislav Neuhaus, Grigory Ginzburg, Mstislav Rostropovich, Vladimir Krainev, Gidon Kremer, Tatiana Grindenko, Myron Polyakin and many others. He maintained personal friendships with some of them.
In his symphony programmes, he widely promoted the works of Ukrainian composers, in particular Lviv composers Stanislav Liudkevych, Vasyl Barvinsky, Roman Simovych, Adam Soltys, Anatoliy Kos-Anatolsky, Desideriy Zador, Isidor Vymeryk, and Myroslav Skoryk.
A special place in the musical life of Lviv was occupied by summer open-air concerts, which took place every week on Saturday and Sunday evenings on the summer stage in the Park of Culture. The initiator of these free concerts was Isaac Pain. Symphonic miniatures, such as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee, were a particular and ongoing success with the audience.
