Vladimir Sofronitsky

In 1903, his family moved to Warsaw, where he started piano lessons with Anna Lebedeva-Getcevich (a student of Nikolai Rubinstein),[1] and later (at the age of nine) with Aleksander Michałowski.

[2] From 1916 to 1921, Sofronitsky studied in the Petrograd Conservatory under Leonid Nikolayev,[3] where Dmitri Shostakovich, Maria Yudina, and Elena Scriabina, the eldest daughter of Alexander Scriabin (who had died in 1915), were among his classmates.

Drawn principally to Romantic repertoire, Sofronitsky recorded a large number of Scriabin's works and also compositions by Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Lyadov, Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Prokofiev, and others.

Sofronitsky's recordings have now been issued systematically in the West by such labels as Arkadia, Arlecchino, Chant du Monde, Denon Classics, Multisonic, Urania and Vista Vera as well as Philips.

His issue in Philips' Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century features Chopin mazurkas and waltzes on the first CD and some of his legendary Scriabin on the second, including the 2nd (first movement), 3rd, 4th, and 9th sonatas and a performance of Vers la flamme.

Denon Classics' (Japan) Vladimir Sofronitsky Edition is a series of 15 CDs, ten of which remain in print.