Michael Ponti

Michael Ponti ( born October 29, 1937 in Freiburg im Breisgau) is an American pianist who was born in Germany and partially formed.

Life

Ponti is the son of a press officer in the U.S. Army. He studied piano in Washington, D.C. at Gilmour McDonald ( students and former assistant to Leopold Godowsky ) 1945-1955 and Erich Flinsch ( once a pupil and assistant of Emil von Sauer) on the Frankfurt Musikhochschule from 1955 to 1961, after the father had been transferred to Germany again. His international career began with the first prize at the Busoni Competition in 1964, after 1956 the 4th and 1958 3rd prize in this competition.

Ponti was considered a pianist who studied the technical difficulties; so included a piano recital in London six of the Etudes d' exécution transcendante of Liszt Chopin Etudes op followed by the 25, the Symphonic Etudes and Schumann 's Toccata and ended with Scriabin's Sonata 4. At his New York debut, he played for three hours and were nine additions. From 1977 to 1999 Ponti also played in a trio with the American violinist and cellist Robert Zimansky January Polasek and entered into a selection of songs by Charles Ives as a companion for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Early 70s took Ponti a large number of unknown romantic piano concertos for Vox / Turnabout, mostly in world premiere recordings, and a solo oeuvre of several composers, including Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky on. Its especially from this time derived Discography therefore includes more than 80 plates. Later he played for the French label Dante and for Naxos a.

In 2000, Ponti suffered a stroke, which he could not use his right hand. Since 2002, Ponti comes with repertoire for the left hand alone, as given by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein commissioned works on. A piano concerto for the left hand by the composer and conductor Paul Theissen for Ponti, with whom he had worked before the stroke.

Ponti lives in the north of Garmisch -Partenkirchen.