Word: pianists
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...BOTTOM LINE: Despite his disability, the pianist retains his formidable musical intelligence and masterly touch...
...functioning hands would seem to be the minimum basic requirement for a concert career, but fortunately musical history says otherwise. When the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, brother of the philosopher Ludwig, lost his right arm serving with the Austrian army in World War I, he reacted with logical positivism: he commissioned several leading composers to write works for the left hand alone...
Warfare has not claimed any pianistic right arms lately, but various mysterious maladies such as carpal tunnel syndrome, progressive degeneration of the nerves and repetitive stress syndrome have struck a number of pianists, most prominently Gary Graffman and Leon Fleisher. Graffman, a dazzling stylist whose troubles began when he first sprained the fourth finger on his right hand while playing an unresponsive instrument in Berlin, has been a left- handed pianist since 1979. Fleisher, a towering performer whose 1958-62 cycle of Beethoven concertos with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra remains a pinnacle of modern recordings, first noticed...
MUSIC U.S. composers' favorite pianist? Ursula Oppens...
GLENN GOULD WAS A GLORIOUS ECCENtric: a concert dropout; a reclusive, self- promoting ascetic; a pianist of Horowitzian technique who, with curious exceptions like Bizet and Sibelius, usually shunned the Romantics. Sony Classical's magnificent GLENN GOULD EDITION, to be completed in 1994, presents Gould's entire recorded oeuvre (much of it previously unreleased). His Haydn is superb; his Mozart and Beethoven range from riveting to risible; his moderns dazzle. Above all, sensibility and omnipotent fingers made him a peerless contrapuntalist, who could with uncanny rhythmic acuity articulate multiple lines and transmute complex musical thought, especially Bach's, into pure...