Gilels, Emil Grigoryevich

Gilels, Emil Grigoryevich (1916-1985), Soviet pianist who started his career as the keyboard equivalent of a fire-eater, but who became legendary for his profound interpretations of the greatest masterpieces of Western music.

Gilels was born in Odesa (now in Ukraine), a Black Sea port with a strong tradition of visits from European performers. He played for Arthur Rubinstein in 1932, before entering the Moscow Conservatoire; back home in Poland, Rubinstein later remarked, “If he ever comes here, I might as well pack my bags and go”. Gilels studied with the famed teacher Heinrich Neuhaus in Moscow in 1935, but he also took classes in history, philosophy, and aesthetics. On winning the Ysaÿe International Festival competition in Brussels in 1938, he was appointed as Neuhaus’s assistant, and taught when his very busy concert schedule permitted for the rest of his life. By 1968, he was touring for 9 to 10 months each year, and learning new works in the summer: his repertoire included over 400 works, with Russian composers particularly strongly represented. He was also a great chamber musician, notably playing in trios with Leonid Kogan and Mstislav Rostropovich from 1949. He collapsed after a recital in 1981, but continued to play to within a year of his death.

Gilels remarked that musical form is a living process, not, as is often suggested, architecture. In later life he channelled his virtuosity and Russian emotionalism completely into this living process, producing a peerless intensity. His variety of tone was astonishing: Daniel Barenboim remarked that “he sounds differently ... whether he plays Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven ... ”. His recorded cycle of Beethoven sonatas was five sonatas short of completion on his death, but it is generally felt to be his monument.