Gregor Piatigorsky — cellist with roots in the Russian Empire
Grigory Pavlovich Pyatigorsky, known in the West as Gregor Piatigorsky, was born on 17 April 1903 (4 April, Old Style) in Yekaterinoslav, in the Russian Empire, now Dnipro in Ukraine, into a Jewish family. His father, a violinist, gave him his first lessons on the violin and piano, but after hearing the cello at an orchestral concert he took it up at seven, and by eight was earning money playing in restaurants and theatres.
He went to Moscow and studied at the Conservatory with Alfred von Glehn. Around 1919, at fifteen or sixteen, he joined the string quartet later named after Lenin and became principal cellist of the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra. He asked repeatedly for permission to continue his studies abroad, and the People's Commissar for Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, refused, telling him he was needed in Moscow. In 1921 he crossed into Poland on a cattle train with a group of artists, played briefly in Warsaw, and went on to Leipzig to study with Julius Klengel.
In Berlin he earned a living in a trio at a Russian café, where Wilhelm Furtwängler heard him and arranged an audition; from 1924 he was principal cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic, leaving in 1928 or 1929, sources differ, to concentrate on a solo career. He made his New York debut in 1929, and from 1930 played chamber music with two other émigrés from the Russian Empire, the violinist Nathan Milstein and the pianist Vladimir Horowitz.
Shortly before the Second World War he settled in the United States with his family, became a citizen in 1942, and taught at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia from 1942 to 1951 and at Tanglewood. He commissioned new works for the cello from Paul Hindemith, Vladimir Dukelsky and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, among others. From 1949 he recorded trios with Jascha Heifetz and Arthur Rubinstein, sometimes called the Million Dollar Trio, and in 1961 he and Heifetz began a chamber series in Los Angeles, the Heifetz-Piatigorsky Concerts.
In 1962 he became professor at the University of Southern California, which established a chair in his name in 1974. His autobiography, Cellist, appeared in 1965. He died in Los Angeles on 6 August 1976, aged seventy-three.
"Refused permission to study abroad, he left Soviet Russia in 1921, crossing into Poland on a cattle train with a group of artists; studied in Leipzig, worked in Berlin, and settled in the United States shortly before the Second World War, becoming a citizen in 1942."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipro (Ukraine)
Born in Yekaterinoslav in the Russian Empire in 1903, he studied at the Moscow Conservatory and at fifteen became principal cellist of the Bolshoi Theatre; refused permission to study abroad, he left for Poland in 1921.
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Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipro (Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"The cello sings. Your job is not to play it. Your job is to let it sing."