Lev Pulver

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