Gary Graffman

Gary Graffman (born October 14, 1928 in New York City ) is an American classical pianist , piano professor and music organizer.

Life

Graffman was born to Russian - Jewish parents. He started playing the piano at the age of three. Graffman entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 1936 at the age of only seven as a piano student of Isabelle Vengerova . After graduating from the Curtis Institute , he made his debut in 1946 with the conductor Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra . By the age of 20, Graffman had a worldwide reputation as a classical pianist. In 1949 he won the prestigious Leventritt Competition. He then continued his piano studies with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music Festival and also learned informally with Vladimir Horowitz .

Graffman had a successful career on the piano. He played with many orchestras and gave concerts internationally. In the following three decades he toured extensively and also in recording studios, played as a soloist and with orchestras around the world. In 1964 he recorded Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini with Leonard Bernstein as conductor of the New York Philharmonic . He also played a reference recording of Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in 1966; this recording was re-released on CD by Sony in 2006 as part of the Sony classic series "Great Performances".

Probably Graffman's best-known recording comes from his piano playing in the 1979 Woody Allen film Manhattan , in which he played George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue , accompanied by the New York Philharmonic. Parts of the Philharmonic Graffman version have been played countlessly in television and films over the past quarter century.

In 1977 he injured the ring finger of his right hand. Because of this injury, he began to redesign his fingering repertoire to avoid using the injured finger. Unfortunately, these changes to his game made the injury worse. Ultimately, the injury forced him to stop using his right hand in 1979. This setback led him to develop other activities and interests, such as writing, photography, and oriental arts. In 1980 he began working at the Curtis Institute , where his career began. In 1986 he took over the management of the Curtis Institute, became president in 1995 and held these offices until 2006. Graffman continues to teach piano at the Curtis Institute.

Recent work has shown that Graffman's finger injury may have been due to focal dystonia , a neurological condition that results in the loss of function and uncontrollable bending of the finger. The pianist Leon Fleisher , a close friend of Graffman, also suffers from this disease.

Shortly after joining the Curtis Institute, he published his memoir under the title I Really Should Be Practicing .

In 1985 he gave a premiere in Great Britain with Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Piano Concerto in C sharp major for the left hand . Paul Wittgenstein had performed the work in the 1920s and played it many times, but it later disappeared from the repertoire.

Seven works for the left hand were written for Graffman. As an example, he played the world premiere of Ned Rorem's Piano Concerto No. 4 , written especially for the left hand, and in 2001 gave the premiere of Daron Hagen's concert Seven Last Words . The American composer William Bolcom composed Gaea , a concerto for two pianos, the Left Hand for Graffman and for Leon Fleisher . This concert was first performed in Baltimore in April 1996. The concert is designed so that it can be performed in different ways, either the piano part alone with a reduced orchestra, or with both piano parts and two reduced orchestras that form a full orchestra complete.

Graffman received honorary doctorates from the cities of Philadelphia and New York, and received the Art Prize from the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania through his long service and dedication to music . In addition to his administrative duties, Graffman remains active as a piano teacher, piano playing coach and chamber musician . His well-known students are the piano virtuosos Lydia Artymow , Lang Lang , Yuja Wang and Haochen Zhang .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gary Graffman . In: The Music Show . May 20, 2006. Retrieved November 29, 2010.
2. ↑ Shannon E. Garnett: Maestro Leon Fleisher Uses 'Two Hands' to Thank NIH . In: The NIH Record . January 4, 2005. Archived from the original on May 28, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 29, 2010. 
3. ^ Piano Music For the Left Hand Alone

literature

• Jennifer Dunning: When a Pianist's Fingers Fail to Obey . In: The New York Times , June 14, 1981. 
• Graffman, Gary (1982). I Really Should Be Practicing . New York: Avon. ISBN 0-380-59873-6

Web links

• Graffmans biography, Curtis Institute of Music website