Word: pianistically
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DIED. VICTOR BORGE, 91, hammy pianist and conductor whose one-man Broadway show, Comedy in Music, ran a record 849 performances; in Greenwich, Conn. Borge originally trained as a concert pianist in his native Denmark, but eventually began incorporating satire and sight gags into his act. A Jew, he fled Europe to escape the Nazis, arriving in the U.S. speaking no English but ultimately perfecting his act to gain worldwide acclaim...
Steve Allen 78 The Tonight Show host was also a pianist and songwriter...
...American pianist Earl Wild, who just turned 85, is the last of the great Romantics, a tradition of spellbinding virtuosos that began with Liszt and flowered before World War II with the "Golden Age" pianists--such legends as Paderewski, Hofmann, Godowsky and Rachmaninoff. Like them, Wild produces gorgeous sounds at any speed or volume, possesses vitalizing musical instincts and revels in the kinetic and sensual possibilities of the piano: its potential to evoke the grandeur of an orchestra and lyricism of a singer...
Born in Pittsburgh, Pa., Wild showed precocity at age three; by six he had a fluent technique. While still a teenage student of the distinguished Dutch pianist Egon Petri, he was already a concert-hall veteran. In 1937 Arturo Toscanini engaged Wild to fill the coveted position of staff pianist for his NBC Symphony Orchestra. Toscanini could be irascible, but he and Wild hit it off. "We both loved music so tirelessly," Wild says. The fiery maestro made Wild famous in 1942 by inviting him to play Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in a nationally broadcast concert...
Schulte, along with pianist James Winn, opened with Arnold Schoenberg's Phantasy for Violin with Piano Accompaniment. The pair played with near-perfect coordination. One immediately noticed how Schulte's idiosyncrasies, like his rather unusual handling of the bow, were used to effective ends. His attack was extraordinary, and he released his bow with a preciseness and rapidity that seemed both risky and impossible...