Mark Taimanov at 100

Mark Taimanov was born in Kharkiv in 1926, learned chess at the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers under Mikhail Botvinnik, and played the leading role in the Soviet youth film Beethoven’s Concert (1936). Together with his first wife, Lyubov Bruk, he formed a sought-after piano duo.

After ending his piano duo career, Mark Taimanov tried for some time to pursue a solo career, but without success. He himself once said about this: “When we play together rather than separately, it isn’t just twice as good — it’s two hundred times better!”

After his 0–6 loss to Bobby Fischer, he was banned from travelling in 1971. The two-time World Senior Champion died at the age of 90.

Taimanov’s first son, Igor, is listed by the St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory as head of the department for piano performance and teaching techniques. After his parents separated, he gave concerts with his mother. Following her death in 1996, the idea arose that Igor and Mark might perform together, but both specialised in secondo, the second part, and one of them would have had to work up the first part (primo), which never happened. Igor’s daughter — Mark’s granddaughter — Kira, also became a concert pianist. She now lives in Paris, working as a cultural mediator.

About the musical career of his parents, Igor Taimanov said the following:

My father was never involved in teaching music. He had other professions — chess and journalism. Lyubov Bruk, my mother, on the other hand, was an outstanding pedagogue, specifically in the field of piano duo performance — probably the only one of such stature in our country. Therefore, the Leningrad musicians you mentioned — more or less prominent solo pianists of different generations in our city — could not have been her students.

My parents’ duo was very far, both in performing style and repertoire, from the well-known German duo of the Kontarsky brothers, Alfons and Aloys. The German duo was rightly considered a leader of the late-20th-century musical avant-garde. They were the first performers of such landmark works as Structures by Pierre Boulez, as well as compositions by Mauricio Kagel, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luciano Berio, performing this music in its characteristic precise and rational manner.

The Bruk–Taimanov duo, by contrast, focused primarily on classical and Romantic repertoire and was distinguished by a lyrical and emotionally expressive style.

Links

• Who am I? - The riddle...
• More about Mark Taimanov...

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