Very few musicians have successfully managed to combine an international solo career with dedicated teaching. The Russian cellist Boris Pergamenschikow (1948–2004) did just that. The world of music lost him too soon, but his memory lives on through his recorded legacy and the work of his students.
Pergamenschikow was born on 29 August 1948 in post-war Leningrad (today’s St Petersburg) to musical parents of Jewish descent. His mother, Esther (née Schneersohn), was a pianist trained at the Moscow Conservatoire, while his father, Miron, a veteran of the First World War, was a military music conductor and a skilled cellist. As a consequence of Stalin’s campaign against Jewish intellectuals, both parents had to rely on odd jobs to make ends meet, as neither of them could find work in their chosen field. The young family lived in two rooms of a typical Soviet communal apartment with shared kitchen and bathroom facilities.
Early in his childhood, Pergamenschikow began playing the piano. When it was time to choose his main instrument, his parents made a practical decision – in a market flooded with pianists and violinists, a cellist had a better chance of making a living. At the age of seven, after initial cello lessons with his father, Pergamenschikow was accepted at the specialist children’s music school of the Leningrad Conservatoire, where he studied the cello with Benjamin Morozov for the following five years. Then he switched to the class of Emmanuel Fischmann, who became his mentor until his graduation from the conservatoire proper twelve years later.
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