| Voice/Instrument: | Pianoforte |
Biography
Alexis Weissenberg (July 26, 1929 – January 8, 2012) was a Bulgarian born French pianist.
Born into a Jewish family in Bulgaria, Sofia, Weissenberg began taking piano lessons at the age of three from Pancho Vladigerov, a Bulgarian composer.[4] He gave his first public performance at the age of eight.
In 1941, he and his mother tried to escape from German-occupied Bulgaria for Turkey, but they were caught and imprisoned in a makeshift concentration camp in Bulgaria for three months. One day, a German guard - who had enjoyed hearing Alexis play Schubert on the accordion - hurriedly took him and his mother to the train station, throwing the accordion to him through the window. The guard told them, "Good luck," in German; the next day, they safely arrived in Istanbul.[5]
In 1945, they emigrated to what was then Palestine, where he studied under Leo Kestenberg and performed Beethoven with the Israel Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. In 1946, Weissenberg went to the Juilliard School to study with Olga Samaroff. He also consulted Artur Schnabel and Wanda Landowska.
In 1947 he made his New York debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of George Szell playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3. Between 1957 and 1966 he took an extended sabbatical for the purpose of studying and teaching.
Bryce Morrison, in "Gramophone", described his early 1970s recording of the Liszt Sonata in B minor as one of the most exciting and also lyrical renditions of the work.[citation needed] His readings of Schumann, Rachmaninoff, and many works by Frédéric Chopin (including his complete works for piano and orchestra, Piano Sonatas No. 2 & 3, nocturnes, and waltzes) are also very well known.
Among his other notable interpretations were those of Johannes Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Carlo Maria Giulini and Riccardo Muti, ("Les Introuvables d'Alexis Weissenberg", 2004), Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as his Piano Concerto No. 3 with Georges Prêtre and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Seiji Ozawa with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (also with Leonard Bernstein and the Orchestre National de France).
His film recording of Stravinsky's Three Movements from Petrushka was also highly praised (January 1965, directed by Åke Falck). In fact, this movie is amongst the most ingenious of classical music film adaptions); when Karajan watched the movie, he immiediatly called for Mr. Weissenberg to step in for the planned Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 production, made instead of Svatoslav Richter).
Weissenberg resumed his career in 1966 by giving a recital in Paris; later that year he played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in Berlin conducted by Herbert von Karajan, who praised him as "one of the best pianists of our time".
Weissenberg gave piano master classes all over the world. With his Piano Master Class in Engelberg (Switzerland), he had as students many pianists of the new generation: Kirill Gerstein, Simon Mulligan, Mehmet Okonsar [1], Nazzareno Carusi, Andrey Ponochevny, Loris Karpell, and Roberto Carnevale among them.[6]
He was also a composer of much piano music and a musical, Nostalgie, that was premiered at the State Theatre of Darmstadt on October 17, 1992.
