Jacques Février (26 July 1900 – 2 September 1979) was a French pianist and teacher.

Jacques Février was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the son of the composer Henry Février. He studied with Édouard Risler and Marguerite Long at the Paris Conservatoire, taking a premier prix in 1921. In 1932 he and the composer were the soloists in the first performance of Francis Poulenc's Concerto for two pianos. Although Paul Wittgenstein premiered Maurice Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand, Février was expressly chosen by the composer to be the first French pianist to perform the work. He made many recordings of the French repertoire, receiving a Grand Prix du Disque of the Charles Cros Academy in 1963 for his recording of Ravel's piano works.

He also taught at the Conservatoire de Paris, where his students included Gabriel Tacchino.

He died in Épinal in 1979, a few weeks after being struck by a car while walking in the countryside.

Kayhan Kalhor (Persian: كيهان كلهر‎), born 24 November 1963, is an Iranian kamancheh player, composer and master of classical Kurdish and Persian music, he is from a Kurdish family.

Kayhan Kalhor was born in Tehran. He began studying music at age seven. By age thirteen he was playing in the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran. Continuing his music studies under various teachers, he studied in the Persian radif tradition and also travelled to study in the northern part of Khorasan province, where music traditions have Kurdish and Turkic influences as well as Persian. At a musical conservatory in Tehran around age 20 Kalhor worked under the directorship of Mohammad-Reza Lotfi who is from Northern Khorasan. Kalhor also travelled in the northwestern provinces of Iran. He later moved to Rome and Ottawa to study European classical music.

Kayhan Kalhor has a wide range of musical influences, he uses several musical instruments, and crosses cultural borders with his work, but at his center he is an intense player of the Persian violin. In his playing Kalhor often pins Persian classical music structures to the rich folk modes and melodies of the Kurdish tradition of Iran.

Clara Haskil (7 January 1895 - 7 December 1960) was a Romanian classical pianist, renowned as an interpreter of the classical and early romantic repertoire.

Haskil was particularly noted for her performances and recordings of Mozart. Many considered her the foremost interpreter of Mozart in her time. She was also noted as a superb interpreter of Beethoven, Schumann, and Scarlatti.

Haskil was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Bucharest, Romania and studied in Vienna under Richard Robert (whose memorable pupils also included Rudolf Serkin and George Szell) and briefly with Ferruccio Busoni. She later moved to Paris, where she started studying with Gabriel Fauré's pupil Joseph Morpain, whom she always credited as one of her greatest influences. The same year she entered the Paris Conservatoire, officially to study with Alfred Cortot although most of her instruction came from Lazare Lévy and Mme Giraud-Letarse, and graduated at age 15 with a Premier Prix. She also graduated with a Premier Prix in violin. Upon graduating, Haskil began to tour Europe, though her career was cut short by one of the numerous physical ailments she suffered throughout her life. In 1913 she was fitted with a plaster cast in an attempt to halt the progression of scoliosis. Frequent illnesses, combined with extreme stage fright that appeared in 1920, kept her from critical or financial success. Most of her life was spent in abject poverty. It was not until after World War II, during a series of concerts in the Netherlands in 1949, that she began to win acclaim.

Monique Haas (October 20, 1909 – June 9, 1987) was a French pianist.

Born in Paris, she studied at the Conservatoire there with Joseph Morpain and Lazare Lévy, taking a Premier Prix in 1927. She went on to study with Rudolf Serkin and Robert Casadesus. As a performer she toured all over the world, winning much praise for her performances of 20th-century music. The composer Francis Poulenc, himself an accomplished pianist, praised her as "the adorable Monique Haas who plays the piano ravishingly", and Henri Dutilleux described her as "a celebrated interpreter of the music of Ravel"

Like many of the French pianists who grew up in the aftermath of the First World War, Monique Haas's repertoire was characterised by an avoidance of Romantic composers and a significant representation of French music. Pieces by François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau appeared regularly on her programmes, as well as that of Mozart and Haydn. The music of Schumann was the significant exception to her neglect of romanticism, though she also included Chopin's studies in her repertoire.

Felix Mikhailovich Blumenfeld (Russian: Фе́ликс Миха́йлович Блуменфе́льд; 19 April 1863 [O.S. 7 April] – 21 January 1931) was a Russian composer, conductor, pianist and teacher.

He was born in Kovalevka, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire (today - part of Kirovohrad, Ukraine), the son of Austrian Mikhail Frantsevich Blumenfeld and the Polish Marie Szymanowska, and studied composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and piano under Fedor Stein between 1881 and 1885. He then taught piano there himself from 1885 until 1918, whilst also serving as conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre until 1911.

This theatre saw the premieres of the operas composed by his teacher and mentor Rimsky-Korsakov, and he was also the conductor at the Russian premiere of Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde.

In 1908, he conducted the Paris premiere of Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov.

From 1918 to 1922, he was the director of the Music-drama school of M.Lysenko in Kiev, where, amongst others, Vladimir Horowitz was a pupil in his masterclasses. He returned to the Moscow Conservatory in 1922, teaching there until his death. Other famous pupils of his include Simon Barere, Maria Yudina and Maria Grinberg. He died in Moscow.