Sergei Eduardovich Bortkiewicz was born on February 28, 1877, in Kharkiv (then part of the Russian Empire, now Ukraine). He received his initial musical training at the Imperial Conservatory in Saint Petersburg under Anatoly Lyadov and Karl von Arek. In 1900, he left Saint Petersburg and traveled to Leipzig, where he became a student of Alfred Reisenauer and Salomon Jadassohn, both pupils of Franz Liszt.
After completing his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory in July 1902, he was awarded the Schumann Prize. In 1904, he returned to the Russian Empire, married Elisabeth Geraklitova, and subsequently settled in Berlin, where he began to compose seriously. From 1904 to 1914, Bortkiewicz lived in Berlin, but spent his summers with his family or on concert tours throughout Europe. He also taught at the Klindworth-Sharvenka Conservatory for one year. ... World War I dramatically changed his life. When Germany declared war on Russia, Bortkiewicz, as a citizen of the Russian Empire, was initially placed under house arrest and later expelled to Russia. He returned to Kharkiv, where he worked as a music teacher and successful pianist. The February Revolution of 1917 brought another turning point. During the Civil War, the Bortkiewicz couple fled via Crimea to Constantinople and finally to Vienna.
In 1925, Bortkiewicz received Austrian citizenship. Although he moved to Vienna in 1928, Berlin lured him back, where he worked as a pianist and composer until 1933. As a Russian, he was soon considered undesirable once again, but was permitted to work in Vienna again from 1935 onward. These years were financially difficult—impoverished, he had to borrow money from friends and supplemented his income by, for example, translating Tchaikovsky's letters from Russian into German.