John Browning (pianist)

John Browning (1966)

John Browning (born May 23, 1933 in Denver , Colorado , † January 26, 2003 in Sister Bay , Wisconsin ) was an American pianist .

Life

John Browning had musical parents, his mother was herself a pianist and student of Theodor Leschetizky . At the age of five he began taking piano lessons, and at the age of ten he made his first public appearance as a soloist (with the Denver Symphony Orchestra ). In 1945 the family moved to Los Angeles , where he went to the Occidental College there. He later took summer courses with Josef and Rosina Lhévinne and, in 1950, came to the Juilliard School in New York at the invitation of Rosina Lhévinne . Van Cliburn was one of his fellow students there .

In 1954 Browning won the Steinway Award , in 1955 the Leventritt Competition and in 1956 the second prize at the Concours Musical Reine Elisabeth in Brussels. An international solo career followed; Browning gave around 100 concerts a year, worked with numerous American orchestras and was involved in important festivals such as Tanglewood and Ravinia Festival . In 1965 Browning was also able to celebrate great success on a tour through the Soviet Union.

During Browning's professional orchestral debut in 1956 with the New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulos , the composer Samuel Barber noticed him and wrote his Piano Concerto op.38 - with which Barber won the Pulitzer Prize in 1963 - especially with regard to Browning's technical skills. He launched the work under the baton of Erich Leinsdorf in 1962 as part of the inauguration of the New York Lincoln Center and recorded it twice. The second recording in 1991 (with Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra ) earned Browning a Grammy Award for best instrumental soloist with orchestra. Another Grammy followed in 1993 with the recording of solo piano works by Barber.

Browning withdrew artistically in the 1970s, but appeared again more and more in the last decade of his life. John Browning died of heart failure at the age of 69.

Browning's repertoire ranged from the Baroque with Bach and Scarlatti through Mozart , Chopin , Liszt and Brahms to the 20th century and also included American contemporaries such as Samuel Barber (who dedicated several works to him), Ned Rorem and Richard Cumming .

Web links

• Obituary v. Jessica Duchen, The Guardian, February 25, 2003 (Engl.)
• Obituary v. James R. Oestreich, The New York Times, January 28, 2003 (Engl.)
• Biography v. Erik Eriksson, allmusic.com (Eng.)
• In Memoriam John Browning, with biography, NPR 2004 (Engl.)
• Memories of John Browning, Arkatov Productions (Eng.)