Daniil Borisovich Shafran (, January 13, 1923February 7, 1997) was a Soviet Russian cellist.

Biography

Early years

Daniil Shafran was born in Petrograd (later Leningrad, then Saint Petersburg) in 1923 to a Jewish family. Even from before his birth he was surrounded by music. His mother and father were music students when he was born. His father, Boris Shafran, went on to be principal cellist of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra and his mother, Frida Moiseyevna, was a pianist. He recounted how, as his mother went into labour, his father was practicing passages from Haydn's D major Concerto in preparation for a recital, and was reluctant to go to the hospital until he had mastered a difficult technical passage. When aged eight and a half, his father bought him a cello and began teaching him. His father was a serious musician and strict teacher A key principle established was to overcome technical obstacles by learning to play far beyond the demands of the work, and Shafran learned to be "mercilessly strict with myself when practicing". and Shafran achieved national prominence. However, he rarely toured outside the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, and virtually all his recordings were for the Melodiya label, so his international reputation was very limited."a brief association with the cellist Daniil Shafran gave me little pleasure. He was a great cellist, with a distinctive tone, but whenever he played, you always had the impression that he was thinking only of the moment when he would have an interesting high note that he could hold on to and produce an attractive sound. He also suffered from nerves. I stopped performing with him in 1951 and he then joined up with Grigory Ginzburg... As a musician, if not a cellist, Rostropovitch was incomparably more interesting, an artist of far greater stature. He dwarfed him completely."

Shafran's Amati cello

Unusually for a major cellist, Shafran played the same instrument throughout his life. He formed an unbreakable bond with the Antonio Amati cello that he won at the age of 14, and always played on it.

The cello is described as dating from 1630. The exact dates of Antonio Amati (son of Andrea Amati, and the elder of the two Brothers Amati) are not known for certain, being variously reported between 1540 and 1607 and 1555 to 1640. Sources such as Cozio report that the entire span of Antonio Amati's working life was 1588–1628. It is by all accounts a magnificent instrument, though somewhat smaller than full size. It has been questioned whether "any Amati, no matter how fine, is sufficiently powerful for a solo cellist at the summit of his career. Baroque instruments of that period would not normally have the power of a later master."

References

  • Daniil Shafran - Cello Solo -book (in English)
  • Official Daniil Shafran Website
  • CONVERSATION WITH VERA GUSEVA
  • CONVERSATION WITH YOSIF FEIGELSON by Paul Tseng
  • The first Prague Spring International Cello Competition in 1950 in photographs, documents and reminiscences