Lev Mikhailovich Pulver (Yiddish pronunciation: Leib Pulver, , European spelling: Leo Pulver, ; 18 December 1883, Verkhnodniprovsk – 18 March 1970, Moscow), was a Soviet and Russian-Jewish composer and musician.
Early life He was an offspring of a renowned klezmorim's family.
Pulver studied violin since early childhood, at first with his father; later on, he studied with his brother-in-law, a disciple of Czech violinist Otakar Ševčík. Pulver graduated from Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied violin and composition under Anatoly Lyadov.
Initially, he was a violinist and composer in a wandering Ukrainian theatre group. Later on, he was a symphonic concert-master and conductor, a founding member of the Stradivari Quartet. He was the musical director of the State Jewish Theatre in Moscow (the GOSET).
Compositions Pulver composed incidental music for works including Shakespeare's King Lear; Sholem Aleichem's 200.000 and The Man of the Air; Adventures of Benjamin the Third after Mendele Mocher Sforim; Abraham Goldfaden's The Sorceress (in collaboration with Joseph Achron); and Zalman Shneyer's Freylekhs (in collaboration with Maximilian Steinberg). He also composed operettas (Gulliver, Inside the Big Top, What is her name?), movie scores, songs, and Yiddish folk-song arrangements. Some of his tunes have been considered as Jewish folklore. He was one of the important musicians bridging the traditional Eastern European Jewish music with the Western classical music forms.
Artists about Lev Pulver
Recordings A few recordings of his music are available featuring the performances of the GOSET orchestra with Solomon Mikhoels and Benjamin Zuskin, as well as by singers Solomon Khromchenko, Mikhail Alexandrovich, Nechama Lifshitz, Marina Gordon and actors Emil Gorovets and Boris Landau.
References 1.Музыка: Большой Энциклопедический словарь. М., 1998 2.КЕЭ, том 6, кол. 885–886 3. Leyb Pulver, "Epizodn fun mayn lebn" (עפיזאדן פון מיין לעבן), in Sovetish Heymland ("סאוועטיש היימלאנד", Moscow), 1970, no. 1-2