Emil Gilels

Emil Gilels ranks among history’s supreme pianists, admired equally for the lucidity and composure of his touch and for the dazzling command he brought to the keyboard. He commanded a vast repertoire stretching from Bach through works by his Russian contemporaries and helped pioneer a contemporary, unsentimental manner of interpreting music. He also numbered among the earliest Soviet musicians granted permission to appear in the West after World War II. His abundant recordings, both studio-made and captured in concert on Soviet state and Western commercial labels, have since been digitally restored for new generations.

Born in Odessa on October 19, 1916, to a father who worked as a bookkeeper in a sugar factory, Gilels grew up in a household where his parents played the piano as devoted amateurs. His younger sister, Elizabeth, trained as a violinist. He enrolled at the Odessa Institute of Music and Drama in 1922 for lessons with Yakov Tkatch and Berthe Ringold. After a triumphant debut as a child prodigy in 1929, he transferred to the Odessa Conservatory in 1932; there Arthur Rubinstein heard him and urged him to enter the All-Union Musicians’ Competition for pianists the following year. Gilels took first prize, the start of several international victories he secured in the mid-1930s. At the same time he studied with Heinrich Neuhaus at the Moscow Conservatory and became Neuhaus’s assistant in 1938. Plans for Gilels and David Oistrakh to perform at the 1939 New York World’s Fair collapsed when war broke out in Europe. Throughout the conflict he remained inside the Soviet Union, giving concerts for troops and in cities that had been occupied. After the war he received the Stalin Prize and, in later years, many further honors for the role he played in sustaining morale.

In 1945 Gilels joined his sister’s husband, Leonid Kogan, and Mstislav Rostropovich to form a trio. He also appeared in duo recitals with his sister and performed two-piano literature with Yacov Flier. In 1947 he married pianist and composer Farizet Khutsyostova, whom he had met while both were students at the Moscow Conservatory; their daughter Elena later became a concert pianist herself. The year after his marriage, Gilels made his first trip outside the Soviet Union, a recital in Prague that led to further engagements in Florence, Scandinavia, and Berlin and to his earliest recordings. His landmark American debut took place in October 1955 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, making him the first prominent Soviet musician to perform in the United States since the Cold War began. Appearances in New York drew equal acclaim; noting the contrast between his slight build and his commanding presence, the New York Times labeled him “the little giant.” He returned for a Canadian tour the next year and made a successful English debut in 1959.

During the 1960s Gilels twice received the Order of Lenin, along with the Order of Commandeur Mérite Culturel et Artistique de Paris and Belgium’s Order of Leopold. He continued to teach at the Moscow Conservatory throughout his career, offering occasional private lessons and classes in technique. He died in Moscow on October 14, 1985. Gilels’s strength resided in the transparency and natural ease of his playing, in his technical brilliance, and in what critic Harold Schoenberg termed his “strong and unassuming musicianship,” calling him the “thinking man’s pianist.” His interpretations invariably invited listeners to perceive the spiritual and intellectual wholeness of each composition. Although the roster of composers with whom he is associated is extensive, a survey of his recordings—from the impulsive energy of his youth to the mature command of subtle detail—remains richly rewarding.