11 Facts About Oscar Feltsman

Oscar Borisovich Feltsman was a Ukrainian-born composer of Lithuanian Jewish descent.

Oscar Feltsman had musical training from the age of five; learning the violin as a pupil of Pyotr Stolyarsky and the piano with Bertha Reynbald, who taught Emil Gilels and Tatiana Goldfarb.

Oscar Feltsman produced his first musical composition for the piano "Autumn" when he was six years old.

Oscar Feltsman graduated from the Pyotr Stolyarsky Music School in Odesa in 1939, where he studied composition with the composer Nikolai Vilinsky.

In 1941, Oscar Feltsman married Evgenia Kaydanovskaya a student of the choral conducting faculty of the Moscow Conservatory.

Around this time Oscar Feltsman began to write music for Circuses and children's variety shows, staged by Natalia Sats.

Also in 1952, Oscar Feltsman wrote his Violin Concerto in three parts.

In 1973, Oscar Feltsman wrote music for the plays Charley's Aunt, The Old Houses and Let the Guitar Play.

In 1987, Oscar Feltsman wrote his vocal cycle Songs of Bygone, based on Jewish folk songs and produced the book Songs of Bygone In the late 1990s Oscar Feltsman wrote 12 songs based on poetry by Yuri Garin which was performed in Odesa to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the city.

Oscar Feltsman wrote a number of chamber works: Ten romances on the poems of Inna Lisnyanskaya, The cycle of romances on the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva, The cycle of songs on poems Hayyim Nahman Bialik.

Oscar Feltsman died, aged 91 of heart failure, in Moscow.