Musical, Artistic, and Teaching Approaches of M.I. Fikhtengolts and V.O. Rabey: Relevance for Today’s Art of Violin Playing

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the centenary of the birth of Mikhail I. Fikhtengolts (1920–1985) and Vladimir O. Rabei (1922–2009)—professors of the Department of Violin and Viola with an outstanding track record of effective teaching in Gnesin music education institutions. Both of them were trained by and continued the traditions of the famous Russian teacher Abram I.  Yampolsky, who produced a plethora of first-class performing musicians with a global impact.

Tatyana N. Kazanskaya (1937–2021) was Mikhail Fikhtengolts’s student and Vladimir Rabei’s wife. Paying tribute to the memory of people dear to her, she shares interesting facts of her creative biography and reveals the details of their unique approach to teaching. Through retrospective analysis, she makes an attempt to get insights into the originality of performing, artistic, and aesthetic principles of the two iconic musicians. Her analysis shows similarity and, at the same time, apparent individuality of the two approaches to student training carefully preserved in a modern setting to encourage their continuity. This solid foundation of the art of violin playing ensured a high level of skill in all the violin students of Gnesin educational institutions. It has become an everlasting quality benchmark in music education in Russia and beyond.

Keywords: Gnessins Russian Academy of Music, Mikhail I. Fikhtengolts, Vladimir O. Rabei, music education, violin performance

For citation: Kazanskaya T. N. Musical, Artistic, and Teaching Approaches of M.I. Fikhtengolts and V.O. Rabey: Relevance for Today’s Art of Violin Playing [Electronic source]. In: Sovremennye problemy muzykoznaniya / Contemporary Musicology, 2022, no. 3, pp. 60–81. (In Russ.) DOI: 10.56620/2587-9731-2022-3-060-081