Boris Goldstein (1922-1987) was bom in Odessa. As was customary at that time in the families of Odessa intellectuals, from the age of four he was given music lessons (in the GoIdstein family this requirement had already been fulfilled by two of the elder children - Boris' sister, Henrietta, born in 1911, who graduated from Moscow Conservatory as a piano student of Felix Blumenfeld, and his brother, Mikhail, a composer, born in 1917). Boris Goldstein was taught in the violin class of Pyotr Stolyarsky, who had brought up a brilliant pleiad of musicians, the most notable of which was David Oistrakh. Six months after beginning his studies, Boris had already performed in public with a small concert program. With Stolyarsky Boris continued for four years, until the entire family moved to Moscow, where the oldest of the children were accepted into the Conservatory, while Boris entered the Special Children's Group affiliated with the Moscow Conservatory (later to be transformed into the Central Music School) into the class of professor A. I. Yampolsky.

The name of the nine-year-old violinist becomes well-known to the broad public in the USSR after his performance of Mendelssohn's Concerto together with the Moscow Radio Orchestra, conducted by N. Anosov. At the age of 11, Boris Goldstein took part in the First All-Union Violinists' Competition. Due to his young age he performed separately from the competition, but he played so well that he was awarded a special prize.

In 1934 he underwent a competition that was more difficult than the First All-Union. Jascha Heifetz came to Moscow on a tour. Heifetz did not tolerate young virtuoso - he demanded that all the future “Paganini" played all the scales in all their forms at first, and nobody could fulfill this requirement until Heifetz’ meeting with Boris. The worldwide celebrity heard all the scales of his interest for the first time, along with a thirty-minute concert program.

In March 1935 the First Henryk Wieniawski International Competition took place in Warsaw. From the Soviet Union two musicians were sent - the 27-year-old David Oistrakh and the 13-year-old Boris Goldstein. The winners of the competition were: Ginette Neveu - First Prize, David Oistrakh - Second Prize, Henry Temianka - Third Prize and Boris Goldstein - Fourth Prize. In 1937 he went to Brussels with the Soviet delegation, for participation in the First Eugène Ysaÿe Competition, where he won Fourth Prize.

In the Soviet Union he was awarded with the Order of ‘Mark of Honor’ for his "outstanding achievements in the sphere of musical art. "The fact that Boris Goldstein was "the youngest musician, holder of an order"' was consistently emphasized by Soviet reference editions. From that time, in the late 1930s he had been recorded on gramophone records. However, the subsequent fate of the musician was not so successful, and this did not happen for reasons of artistry.

As a student of the Conservatory (in the class of Lev Tseitlin) Goldstein, along with many other musicians, took part in front brigades during World War II. In 1943 he left for a six month "tour” of the Northern Navy, and misses the Conservatory exam sessions. As a result he did not take the examination for one subject - the ‘Speedy Course on the History of the Communist Party’. Due to the untimely taking of the examination, Goldstein was expelled from the Conservatory. Only five years later, in 1953, the new rector of the Conservatory, Alexander Sveshnikov, readmits Goldstein to the Conservatory and permits him to complete the course.

The problems with the Conservatory were only the beginning of the "educational process”. If the clerk bureaucracy for the arts was willing to tolerate the young virtuoso, the grown-up musician was harshly assigned the place to him in the table of ranks. Already in the 1940s it became obvious that Goldstein did not meet the ascribed perspectives of Soviet art, and “somewhere above” the decision was made of the inexpediency of the continuation of the musician's career. During the 35 years of work as a soloist of the Moscow Philharmonic Society (from 1939 to 1974) Boris GoIdstein was allowed to go on tours abroad only twice - to Greece in 1955 and to Hungary in 1958. His concerts in the large cities of the USSR were limited (there was a time when he was only allowed to perform in Moscow once every two years). In the early 1950s an undercover prohibition was made on his further recordings on gramophone records. Only in 1961, due to the interference of Dmitri Shostakovich, after a hiatus of ten years, Boris Goldstein once again recorded two studio sessions at Melodia. But this was merely an illusion of a continuation of his artistic career.

In 1974 Goldstein was able to leave the USSR, and the musician settled in Hannover in West-Germany. There he won an open competition and took the position of professor of the Würzburg Music Academy. His last concert took place in 1987 in Jerusalem.