Vladimir N Drozdoff

Life and early career

Vladimir Drozdoff was born in Saratov, Russia to Olga Alexandrovna Balmasheva-Drozdova and Nikolai Vasilyevich Drozdoff. He was the oldest of three boys, all of whom were musicians. A year younger, his brother Anatoly was both a composer and pedagogue, also a graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatory, and later a professor at the Moscow Conservatory; the youngest, Valerian, was a violinist. Their mother, Olga Aleksandrovna Balmasheva (Drozdova) was a teacher of music at the Saratov Music School. Vladimir Drozdoff, was, during his life, a well-known and respected concert pianist and composer, both in Russia and Europe and in the United States after he emigrated post Revolution.

At the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, he studied piano under Anna Essipova, composition under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, was the youngest professor ever appointed at the Conservatory, and was the colleague of Auer, Medtner, Godowsky, Glazounov, Liadov, and Gretchaninov; and it was here where he first met Sergei Rachmaninoff His students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory included Emanuel Bay, Maria Yudina and Pauline Heifitz. In New York, his wife Anna Drozdova (who, like Drozdoff, was accepted as an especially talented student at St. Petersburg Conservatory, and also graduated with a gold medal, his daughter Nathalie Drozdoff-Cherny, and son Paul Drozdoff all taught in the Drozdoff Studio at 302 West 107th Street and later at 204 West 81st Street. Vladimir, Nathalie, and Paul also performed, both individually and together, from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Reviews

“The performance of the Russian pianist Drozdoff deserved universal praise. As pianist, he demonstrated a great technique, as well as elastic, free keystroke, reminding that of Feruzzio Busoni."

“Due to his beautiful touch and poetry of feeling, Drozdoff belongs to those very handsome pianists (among whom unforgettable Reisenauer is the first), who may be listened to for hours and hours without feeling any fatigue.”

“His fingers are just miraculous, and his technique is thoroughly substantiated. Demi-legato flow of passages is especially impressive.”

“It was in Chopin’s familiar sonata of the Funeral March that Mr. Drozdoff displayed individual and striking qualities … marked by rugged rhythm, nervous accentuation, alternating sudden savage outbursts and lyric intervals of song-like serenity. Here was Chopin in the cold morning light from the East, glimpsing a warring Poland from the Slavic side, and not the perfumed parlor Chopin of Paris.”

“Vladimir Drozdoff, a Russian pianist who cloaks a volcanic technique under the impassive calm of the Near East and whose quiet strength explores some remote and forbidding heights of tonal climax…” “…and the B-flat minor sonata of Glazunov. It was in the finale and presto of the last named that Mr. Drozdoff tossed off handfuls of notes, like confetti thrown in sunlight, colorful as a painter’s palette, in the sheer grasp of keyboard, brusquely emotional in the very violence of energy and speed.”

“…at the Town Hall, where an audience remained for three encores after a more than two-hour program.”

“The appearance last night of Vladimir Drozdoff, noted Russian pianist, marked a special page in the annals of music at the resort. Seldom have the rafters of the music room of the Everglades Club vibrated to such a sonorous and majestic tone as this artist evoked…”

“A long program revealed each pianist as a first rate artist and musician.”

“Dr. Drozdoff completed the program, playing with his accustomed artistry.”

“The individual and combined talents were appreciably exhibited illustrating musicianship that had been generously praised.”

“An eloquent and clearly etched reading of Moussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ his broad and varied sense of values ably differentiating the several musical subjects.”

“The Chopin A-flat Ballade was free to the point of dramatic declamation in the ebb and flow of the poetical thought and wholly consistent in its grand design and imaginative spirit.”