Gary Graffman
Gary Graffman ( born October 14, 1928 in New York City ) is an American classical pianist, professor of piano and music organizer.
Life
Graffman was born the son of Russian Jewish parents. With the piano, he began at the age of three years. Graffman came in 1936 at the age of only seven years into the Curtis Institute of Music as a piano student of Isabelle Vengerova. After his graduation in Curtis Institute he made his debut in 1946 with conductor Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. At 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 continues and also met informally with Vladimir Horowitz.
Graffman pursued a successful career on the piano. He played with many orchestras and has performed internationally. Over the next three decades, he was extensively toured and also in recording studios, played as a soloist and with orchestras around the globe. In 1964 he took Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. He also played a recording of Prokofiev 's Third Reference Piano Concerto with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in 1966; The picture was 2006 again on CD released by Sony as part of Sony's classic series "Great Performances".
Probably the best-known recording of Graffman comes from his playing for 1979 turned Woody Allen movie 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 in countless television and movies in the past quarter century.
In 1977, he injured his ring finger of his right hand. Due to this injury he began to develop his repertoire in the new fingering to avoid the use of the injured finger. Unfortunately, however, these changes aggravated the injury of his game. Finally, the injury forced him in 1979 to dispense with the use of his right hand. This setback led him to develop other activities and interests, such as writing, photography and Oriental Art. In 1980 he started at the Curtis Institute to work, where his career had begun. In 1986, he took over the management of the Curtis Institute, 1995 President and held this office until 2006 when. Graffman at the Curtis Institute is still active as a piano teacher.
Recent work showed that Graff Mans finger injury possibly due to focal dystonia, a neurological disorder that results in the loss of function and uncontrollable curling the finger result. The pianist Leon Fleisher, a close friend Graff Mans, also suffers from this disorder.
Shortly after his admission at the Curtis Institute, he published his memoirs under the title I Really Should Be Practicing (I should really practice ).
In 1985, he resigned as premier in United Kin Ninen with Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Piano Concerto in C sharp major for the left hand on. Paul Wittgenstein had performed the work in the 1920s and played it many times, but later it disappeared from the repertoire.
Seven Works for the Left Hand written for Graffman. As an example, he played in 1993, the world premiere of Ned Rorem's Piano Concerto No.. 4, written specifically for the left hand, and in 2001 he 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 Leon Fleisher. His first performance saw this concert in Baltimore in April 1996. The concert is designed so that it can be listed in different ways, either the piano part alone with reduced orchestra, or with both piano parts and two reduced orchestras, committed to a full orchestra complement.
By way of his many years of service and his devotion to music got Graffman honorary doctorates from the cities of Philadelphia and New York, and he received the Art Award of the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In addition to his administrative duties Graffman remains active as a piano teacher, piano coach and as a chamber musician. His students are known the piano virtuoso Lydia Artymow, Lang Lang, Wang and Zhang Yujia Haochen.