Klara Berkovich

Klara Yefimovna Berkovich (née Gordion, born 19 May 1928) is a Soviet and American violinist and master violin teacher who divided her career between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Klara Berkovich was born in Odesa, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), the only child of Yefim Josefovich Gordion, a machinist, and Adele Raphaelovna Tesler, a teacher of Russian language and literature.

A cosmopolitan city, Odesa was becoming a hotbed of Soviet violinists, thanks largely to Pyotr Stolyarsky and his disciples, who perfected a pedagogical method for teaching children from ages as young as four.

Nathan Milstein, David Oistrakh, Boris Goldstein, Elizabeth Gilels, and Mikhail Fikhtengoltz would all emerge from Odesa, along with many others.

In 1934, Klara at age 7 began to study violin at Special Music School No. 1 with Viktor Karakes, a former student of Stolyarsky who in addition to teaching played in theatre orchestras.

Alongside her musical studies, Klara pursued regular academic studies in the public schools of Odesa.

World War II threw Odesa into turmoil.

When Klara was 13, the German army invaded the Ukrainian SSR and the Soviet Union was drawn into World War II on the side of the Allies.

Needing soldiers, the Soviet army conscripted many ordinary citizens from Odesa, among them Yefim Gordion, Klara's father, who was 49 years old.

The family never saw him again.

As Nazi forces closed on Odesa, Klara and her mother—knowing the danger they faced as Jews—fled by ship on 12 August 1941, across the Black Sea.

Seeking sanctuary, they wound up in the village of Kafkas, where they stayed for a year.

During that time Klara taught her first violin student.

In August 1942, with the Germans advancing more deeply into the Soviet Union, Klara and her mother left Kafkas on foot.

Moving to the east and north and traveling alone, they walked, hitchhiked, jumped freight trains, and slept in train stations and city squares.

As they moved, part of a great tide of travelers, they survived by taking odd jobs and by selling Mrs. Gordion's wedding ring and all else they could spare.

In two months on the road, they covered more than 1500 miles.

They arrived in the Siberian town of Novosibirsk in October, just before winter 1942.

It was already so cold that the milk froze on the streets.

Mother and daughter remained in Novosibirsk until the end of World War II, a period of nearly three years.

Klara attended public high school in Novosibirsk for her academic work and resumed musical studies in the Novosibirsk Special Music School.

There her new violin professor was Josef Gutmann, a fine and experienced teacher who had fled Kyiv for Siberia to escape the Germans.

Gutmann refined her playing along lines of greater ease and relaxation and prepared her for conservatory studies.

In 1945 the war ended and Klara graduated from high school in Novosibirsk.

With the Nazis defeated and departed, she and her mother returned to find a devastated Odesa.

Klara, now 17, auditioned for the Odesa Conservatory.

She was admitted as a student of Leonid Lembersky, a renowned pedagogue and former student of Stolyarsky who concertized widely as a soloist and chamber musician in the Ukraine.

In addition to his conservatory students, Lembersky also taught several students in the elite Stolyarsky Academy.

(Lembersky's daughter, Suzanna Lemberskaya, was for a time a student of Klara's; she later became a pianist and opera coach with the San Francisco and Pittsburgh operas.)

Under Lembersky, Klara Gordion pursued a five-year program that led to her master's degree in Chamber Music and Teaching in 1951 at the age of 23.

The year she graduated, she won a section position as first violinist in the Orchestra of the Odesa Theatre of Opera and Ballet.

After two years in the Odesa opera orchestra, Klara met Adam Adolfovich Berkovich, a 25-year-old army engineer who was visiting his parents in Odesa.

They had known each other slightly as children, and soon they married.

Adam was based in Leningrad, so Klara and her mother left Odesa and joined him there.

Arriving in the city in 1953, Klara Berkovich wanted to teach, but she lacked connections in the music community.

When she applied to the civic authorities for a position in the city's music schools, she was told there were no local openings for inexperienced candidates.

There was, however, a vacancy in Vyborg, a formerly Finnish town six hours to the north by train.

She took the job.

Every Wednesday she caught the midnight train to Vyborg, taught children Thursday through Saturday, and returned to Leningrad on the Saturday overnight.

At the end of the school year her work was examined by the musical authorities in Leningrad, and she was awarded a permanent teaching position at the Special School for the Musically Gifted in the Leningrad borough of Petrograd.