Alexander Jocheles won a prize at the Second Frederic Chopin Pianists’ Competition in Warsaw in 1932. However his fame as a pianist was ensured by the Second Prize won him in the First All-Union Competition for Musicians-Performers.
Alexander Jocheles had a preference for a broad repertoire which included numerous compositions that were rarely heard in performance by Soviet pianists of his time: from his own editions of Jean Philippe Rameau’s concertos and the rarely performed one-movement Concerto in D major by Ludwig van Beethoven to Claude Debussy’s Fantasy, Arthur Honegger’s Concertino and Francis Poulenc’s “Rhapsody Negre” — compositions which he presented to his country’s public for the first time.
Jocheles is well-known as having made a number of his own transcriptions — for instance, in 1947 he performed Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata N. 29 (opus 106) in transcription for piano and orchestra. In Jocheles’ concerts and recitals his transcriptions of Bach’s, Handel’s and Gluck’s music took up halves of concerts. Alexander Lvovich pertained to the select few pianists who had preserved and developed the tradition of transcriptions. Of special interest is his work on completion and reconstruction of Schubert’s piano sketches.
From 1952 Alexander Lvovich was a professor of the Gnesins’ State Music pedagogical institute.
At the Gnessins’ Institute Jocheles was the initiator of the lengthy cycle of concerts “The History of the Piano Sonata for 300 Years.”
Alexander Jocheles was an outstanding piano pedagogue. His ability to analyze musical compositions, remarkable ingenuity in searching different variants of fingerings, a wealth of knowledge of music history and culture and phenomenal memory made him into a veritably legendary figure.
The Melodiya had released three times A. Jocheles’ pedagogical commentaries to the performance of the following works: J.S. Bach’s “Capriccio on the Departure of his Beloved Brother,” Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata N. 17, opus 31, N. 2 and Johannes Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Schumann, which enjoyed popularity among students, pedagogues and fans of the art of piano playing.
