Elmira Nəzirova

Elmira Nazirova was an Azerbaijani pianist and composer who taught at the Azerbaijan State Conservatory and moved to Israel in 1990.

1928 to 2014Azerbaijani piano and orchestral compositionsFriendship with Dmitri ShostakovichTeaching at Azerbaijan State Conservatory

Born: 30 November 1928, Baku
Died: 23 January 2014, Haifa
Occupation: pianist, composer
Education: Baku Academy of Music

Elmira Nəzirova was born in 1928 in Baku

Nazirova was born in Baku on 30 November 1928 to a Georgian Jewish family. As a child she studied at the Baku Academy of Music in a program for gifted students. At 14 she joined the Composers Union of Azerbaijan.

Her Piano Preludes were performed at a music festival in Tbilisi, where Reinhold Gliere noted her work. Encouraged by Uzeyir Hajibeyov, she studied at the Moscow Conservatory, piano with Yakov Zak and composition with Dmitri Shostakovich. She returned to Baku and graduated from the Azerbaijan State Conservatory in 1950 and from its composition program in 1954.

She formed a lifelong friendship with Shostakovich, and his letters to her have been studied for her influence on his Tenth Symphony. Rumors of a romance existed, but she denied them.

She began teaching piano at the conservatory in 1951 and became a professor there in 1971. She toured in Russia, Georgia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Egypt and Iraq. Her works include three piano concertos and a Piano Concerto on an Arabic Theme written with Fikret Amirov.

In 1990 she moved to Israel with her husband Miron Fel and their two children, and she kept teaching there. She died in Israel on 23 January 2014.