Ilja Bergh is a Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 pianist and composer.

His father was a singing teacher and his mother, Russian-born, was a painter. His grandfather was the composer Rudolph Sophus Bergh

Rudolph Sophus Bergh

Rudolph Sophus Bergh was a Danish composer and zoologist. He was the son of physician and zoologist Rudolph Bergh. He received his general education at the Metropolitanskolen and then studied music at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and zoology at the University of Copenhagen...

 and his great-grandfather physician and zoologist Rudolph Bergh

Rudolph Bergh

Rudolph Bergh , full name Ludvig Sophus Rudolph Bergh, was a Danish physician and malacologist. He worked in Copenhagen....

.

Ilja Bergh led a colorful and turbulent life. His childhood took him from Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 to Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

 and Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

, to Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

. He received his first piano lessons in Kiev 1935-1937. After World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he was admitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Music, but was thrown out. Later he was admitted again and received his diploma in 1957.