Maria Curcio (27 August 1918^[1][2][3] or 1919^[4] – 30 March 2009) was an Italian classical pianist who became renowned as a greatly influential and sought-after teacher. Her students included Martha Argerich, Radu Lupu, Dame Mitsuko Uchida, Leon Fleisher and Geoffrey Tozer. She was the last student of Artur Schnabel and she passed on his teachings to her own students.

Biography[link]

Maria Curcio was born in Naples in 1918, to an Italian father and a Jewish-Brazilian mother, also a pianist who had studied with a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni.^[2] She was playing by age three, and at age seven was taken to Rome to play for Benito Mussolini, but refused to do so.^[1][2][5] She was tutored at home to leave more time for practising, but she did not have a happy childhood, as she was pushed into accepting too many engagements too soon, and there was no time to play or have friends.^[4] Ottorino Respighi invited her to give a recital at his house.^[2] She was accepted to the Naples Conservatory at age nine, receiving her degree by 14.^[6] Her mother arranged for her to study with Alfredo Casella and Carlo Zecchi (a pupil of Artur Schnabel)^[2] in Italy, and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.^[1][4] She also studied with Artur Schnabel himself from age 15; he did not normally take young pupils, but his son Karl Ulrich persuaded him to audition her.^[1] When he did so, he described her as "one of the greatest talents I have ever met".^[4] When Schnabel was on tour, she had lessons with Fritz Busch.^[4]

She made her London debut in 1939,^[3] but at the outbreak of World War II, she was in Amsterdam, where she had followed Schnabel's secretary Peter Diamand, and where she performed frequently. However, during the German occupation of the Netherlands from 1940, when Jews were banned from playing in public, she turned down all offers of engagements in protest (Diamand was Jewish).^[4] Diamand spent some time in a Dutch concentration camp before escaping. They then needed to hide from the Nazis, in attics and other cramped places, with inadequate food.^[2] She became a victim of malnutrition and tuberculosis, unable to even walk properly, let alone play.^[1] Her performing career was now effectively over. She married Diamand in 1948, but she needed years of therapy to restore her power to her legs, arms and fingers. Wilhelm Furtwängler wanted to record with her, but by the time he died in 1954 she still had not recovered sufficient strength.^[1] She did, however, finally return to playing; she collaborated with such artists as Benjamin Britten, Carlo Maria Giulini, Szymon Goldberg, Otto Klemperer, Josef Krips, Pierre Monteux and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.^[4] Her last performance was in 1963. She then turned to teaching and giving master classes. She also coached singers at Josef Krips's request when he conducted the Netherlands Opera.^[4]

In the meantime, Peter Diamand had been appointed director of the Edinburgh Festival and they had moved to the UK. She served on the jury of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition in 1966.^[1] She was appointed Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music.^[1] She played privately with Sir Clifford Curzon, who had introduced her to Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and their circle in 1947.^[1][2] She often played four-hand piano music with Britten.^[5]

She and her husband divorced in 1971 after he had a relationship with Marlene Dietrich. She spent her last few years in Porto, Portugal, where she died in March 2009, aged 90.

BBC Scotland made two films about Maria Curcio in the 1980s: Music in Camera: Maria Curcio - Fulfilling a Legacy and Maria Curcio - Piano Teacher.^[7] A documentary of her life, Music Beyond Sound, was made by her student Douglas Ashley in 1993.^[1] He also wrote a book of the same name.^[8][9]

Students[link]

Maria Curcio's students came from many countries, and included:

• Pierre-Laurent Aimard ^[4]
• Martha Argerich ^[1][4]
• Douglas Ashley ^[10]
• Douglas Weeks ^[11]
• Thomas Bartlett^[12]
• Peter Bithell
• Michel Block ^[9]
• Evelyne Brancart
• Angela Brownridge ^[13][14]
• Myung-whun Chung ^[4]
• Simone Dinnerstein
• Barry Douglas ^[1][4]
• Christopher Elton
• José Feghali ^[4]
• Leon Fleisher ^[4]
• Peter Frankl ^[4]
• Claude Frank ^[4]
• Franz Glazer ^[9]
• Anthony Goldstone ^[4]
• Jean-François Heisser ^[15]
• Ian Hobson ^[4]
• Niel Immelman
• Terence Judd ^[4]
• Angela Kim ^[16]
• Dalia Lazar (her last student)
• Rae de Lisle
• Radu Lupu ^[1][4]
• Tessa Nicholson ^[17]
• Rafael Orozco ^[4]
• Alfredo Perl ^[1]
• Matthew Schellhorn
• Ignat Solzhenitsyn ^[1]
• Yevgeny Sudbin
• Sergio Tiempo
• Hugh Tinney ^[4]
• Geoffrey Tozer ^[4]
• Dame Mitsuko Uchida.^[1][4]
• Vedat Kosal
• Suzanne Goyette

References[link]

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the Hungarian Wikipedia. (August 2010) Don't speak Hungarian? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the Hungarian article. Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|hu|Frankl Péter (matematikus)}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

For the pianist see Peter Frankl.

Péter Frankl (born 26 March 1953 in Kaposvár, Somogy county, Hungary) is a Hungarian mathematician and street performer. Frankl studied Mathematics in University Paris Diderot and has lived in Japan since 1988, where he sometimes appears on NHK. Though not as popular as he once was, he still performs juggling in public spaces around Tokyo. Frankl won a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1971. His Ph.D. advisor was Gyula O.H. Katona,^[1] and he has six joint papers with Paul Erdős.^[2]

His research is in combinatorics, especially in extremal combinatorics.

Since 1998, he is an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

References[link]

1. ^ "Theoretical Computer Science Genealogy". ACM SIGACT. http://sigact.acm.org/cgi-bin/genealogy.cgi?file=database-F.html&from=Frankl,Peter&to=endhere. Retrieved 2007-11-27. ^{[dead link]}
2. ^ "Erdos0". Erdos Number Project. Archived from the original on 2 November 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20071102142100/http://www.oakland.edu/enp/Erdos0. Retrieved 2007-11-27. 

External links[link]

• Official web page
• Timeline in Japanese

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Rafael Orozco Flores (24 January 1946 – 25 April 1996) was a Spanish classical pianist. Orozco is acclaimed as one of the great Spanish concert pianists.^[1]

Rafael Orozco came from a musical family in Córdoba and studied with José Cubiles,^[2] Alexis Weissenberg^[3] and Maria Curcio, the last and favourite pupil of Artur Schnabel.^[4] His professional career began after he won first prize in the 1966 Leeds International Piano Competition in the UK.

His large repertoire included works by Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Manuel de Falla, Sergei Rachmaninoff^[5] and Isaac Albéniz. He gave recitals on five continents and participated as soloist with the world's great orchestras, including Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and London. Orozco also participated in music festivals at Osaka, Praga, Berlin, Santander, Edimburg, Spoleto, and Aldeburgh.

Orozco's playing was used in Ken Russell's 1970 film The Music Lovers, based on the life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

In 1986, Córdoba awarded Orozco the Gold Medal of the city and the title of Hijo Predilecto (Favourite Son).^[2]

Orozco died in 1996. The Conservatorio Superior de Música Rafael Orozco in Córdoba is named in his honour.^[6]

References[link]

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Barry Douglas

Barry Douglas OBE (born 23 April 1960 in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a classical pianist and conductor. He studied piano, cello, clarinet and organ while growing up in Belfast. He first studied in Belfast while attending Methodist College Belfast (MCB) and, at 16, had lessons with Felicitas LeWinter, a pupil of Emil von Sauer and grand-pupil of Franz Liszt. In London he studied with John Barstow for four years and then studied privately with Maria Curcio,^[1][2] the last and favourite pupil of Artur Schnabel, going on to study with the Russian pianist Yevgeny Malinin in Paris. He won the Bronze Medal at the Van Cliburn Competition in Texas in 1985 and the top prize in the Santander Paloma O'Shea International Piano Competition competition in Spain. He won the gold medal, outright in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1986, the first non-Russian pianist to do so since Van Cliburn in 1958.^[3]

Career[link]

His debut album was a recording of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. He has made many recordings since then and has recently (2007) completed (with Camerata Ireland) recording the five Beethoven piano concertos and the Triple Concerto (with Chee-Yun Kim and Andrés Díaz). He is Artistic Director of the International Piano Festival in Manchester, England and the Clandeboye Festival in Clandeboye, Bangor, County Down. He founded Camerata Ireland in 1998^[4] which has Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, and Mary McAleese, the then President of Ireland, as Joint Patrons.

Barry Douglas increasingly devotes part of his time to conducting the Camerata Ireland orchestra. He has directed cycles of the complete Beethoven symphonies (in November 2002) and Mozart and Schubert symphonies and Mozart concertos in 2000 and 2001. He has recorded on the RCA and Satirino France labels.

Later Awards[link]

Barry Douglas was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2002 New Year's Honours List for services to music.^[5] He also received a Fellowship of the Royal College of Music where he is Visiting Prince Consort Professor of Piano, and an Hon. Doctorate of Music from Queens University Belfast. He received an honorary Doctorate of Music from the National University of Ireland in September 2007.

He is married and has three children. He shares his time between Paris and Lurgan.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Barry Douglas
• Camerata Ireland
• Lebrecht Music & Arts

Artur Schnabel, about 1906

Artur Schnabel (April 17, 1882 – August 15, 1951) was an Austrian classical pianist, who also composed and taught. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura. Among the 20th century's most respected and most important pianists, his playing displayed a vitality, profundity and spirituality in the Austro-German classics, particularly the works of Beethoven and Schubert. His performances of these compositions have often been hailed as models of interpretative penetration, and his best-known recordings are those of the Beethoven piano sonatas. Harold C. Schonberg referred to Schnabel as "the man who invented Beethoven".^[1]

Life and work[link]

The early years[link]

Born in Lipnik (Kunzendorf) near Bielitz, Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (today a part of Bielsko-Biała, Poland),^[2][3] Schnabel was the youngest of three children born to Isidor Schnabel, a textile merchant, and his wife Ernestine (née Labin). He had two sisters, Clara and Frieda.^[3][4] His family was Jewish.^[5]

Schnabel's parents moved to Vienna in 1884, when he was two. He began learning the piano at the age of four, when he took a spontaneous interest in his eldest sister Clara's piano lessons. His prodigious talent quickly became evident. At the age of six he began piano lessons under Professor Hans Schmitt of the Vienna Conservatorium (today the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna). Only three years later he was accepted as a pupil by the redoubtable and internationally celebrated piano pedagogue Theodor Leschetizky.^[3][4]

The Leschetizky years[link]

Schnabel remained under Leschetizky's tutelage for seven years, between 1891 and 1897. His co-students of Leschetizky during that period included Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Mark Hambourg and Ignaz Friedman.

Initially, for his first year under Leschetizky, he was given rigorous preparatory technical tuition from Anna Yesipova (Leschetizky’s second wife and a famous pianist in her own right) and also from Malwine Bree who was Leschetizky's assistant.^[4] From age ten, he participated in all Leschetizky's classes.^[2]

Following a failed initial approach to Anton Bruckner, Schnabel studied music theory and composition under Eusebius Mandyczewski. Mandyczewski was an assistant to Johannes Brahms, and through him Schnabel was introduced to Brahms' circle and was often in the great composer's presence. The young Schnabel once heard Brahms play in a performance of his first piano quartet; for all the missed notes, said Schnabel, it "was in the true grand manner."^[2]

Schnabel made his official concert debut in 1897, at the Bösendorfer-Saal in Vienna. Later that same year, he gave a series of concerts in Budapest, Prague and Brünn (today Brno, Czech Republic).^[3]

The Berlin years[link]

Schnabel moved to Berlin in 1898, making his debut there with a concert at the Bechstein-Saal.^[3] Following World War I, Schnabel also toured widely, visiting the United States, Russia and England.

He gained initial fame thanks to orchestral concerts he gave under the conductor Arthur Nikisch as well as playing in chamber music and accompanying his future wife, the contralto Therese Behr, in Lieder.

In chamber music, he founded the Schnabel Trio with the violinist Alfred Wittenberg and the cellist Anton Hekking; they played together between 1902 and 1904. In 1905, he formed a second Schnabel Trio with Carl Flesch (with whom he also played violin sonatas) and the cellist Jean Gérardy. In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, Gérardy (a Belgian) left the trio as he could no longer remain in Germany. He was replaced by Hugo Becker and this became the third Schnabel Trio.

Later, Schnabel also played in a quartet with violinist Bronisław Huberman, composer/violist Paul Hindemith and the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (with whom he also played and recorded cello sonatas). Schnabel also played with a number of other famous musicians including the violinist Joseph Szigeti and the cellists Pau Casals and Pierre Fournier.

He was friends of, and played with, the most distinguished conductors of the day, including Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, George Szell, Willem Mengelberg, and Sir Adrian Boult.

From 1925 Schnabel taught at the Berlin State Academy, where his masterclasses brought him great renown. Among Schnabel's many piano pupils were Clifford Curzon, Rudolf Firkušný, Adrian Aeschbacher, Lili Kraus, Leon Fleisher, Carlo Zecchi, Claude Frank, Leonard Shure, Alan Bush, Nancy Weir, Konrad Wolff, Jascha Spivakovsky, Eunice Norton, Henry Jolles, Maria Curcio, Noel Mewton-Wood and radio personality Karl Haas. ^[6][7]

The later years[link]

Schnabel, a Jew, left Berlin in 1933 after the Nazi Party took control. He lived in England for a time while giving masterclasses at Tremezzo on Lake Como in Italy, before moving to the United States in 1939. In 1944, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. There he took a teaching post at the University of Michigan, returning to Europe at the end of World War II. Among his pupils in Michigan was composer Sam Raphling.

He continued to give concerts on both sides of the Atlantic until the end of his life, as well as composing and continuing to make records, although he was never very fond of the whole studio process. He died in Axenstein, Switzerland and was buried in Schwyz, Switzerland.

Family[link]

Schnabel married Therese Behr in 1905. They had two sons, Karl Ulrich Schnabel (1909–2001) who also became a classical pianist and renowned piano teacher, and Stefan Schnabel (1912–99), who became a well regarded actor.

Repertoire[link]

Schnabel was best known for his devotion to the core German composers, especially the Viennese classics of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. He was also renowned for his playing of works by Brahms and Schumann. He also played and recorded works by Bach.

However, his repertoire was wider than that. During his young virtuosic years in Berlin, he played works by other composers including Liszt, Chopin and Weber. On his early American tours, he programmed works such as the Chopin Preludes and Schumann's Fantasie in C.^[8] Among other works that he played, as recalled by those such as Claudio Arrau and Vladimir Horowitz, who had heard Schnabel in the 1920s, were Chopin's E minor Piano Concerto and the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, and Weber's Konzertstück in F minor, Piano Sonata No. 2, and Invitation to the Dance.^[9][10] Schnabel himself mentioned that he had played the Liszt Sonata in B minor "very often", as well as the Liszt E-flat Piano Concerto.^[2]

It is not clear why Schnabel dropped those from his performing repertoire in the 1930s, after his final departure from Germany. He claimed that it was because he decided that he wanted to play only "music which is better than it could be performed".^[2] However, it has been suggested by some that "Schnabel, uprooted from his native heritage, may have been clinging to the great German composers in an attempt to keep his cultural origins alive".^[11]

Schnabel was known for championing the then-neglected sonatas of Schubert and, even more so, Beethoven, including his more challenging late works. While on a tour of Spain, Schnabel wrote to his wife saying that during a performance of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations he had begun to feel sorry for the audience. "I am the only person here who is enjoying this, and I get the money; they pay and have to suffer," he wrote. Schnabel did much to popularize Beethoven's piano music, making the first complete recording of the sonatas, completing the set for the British label HMV in 1935. This set of recordings has never been out of print, and is considered by many to be the touchstone of Beethoven sonata interpretations, though shortcomings in finger technique mar many performances of fast movements (Sergei Rachmaninoff is supposed to have referred to him as "the great adagio pianist"). It has been said that he suffered greatly from nerves when recording; in a more private setting, his technique was impeccable. Claudio Arrau has said that Schnabel's live performances during the 1920s were technically "flawless."^[12] He also recorded all the Beethoven piano concertos.

Schnabel as composer[link]

Despite his performing repertoire being concentrated largely on the works of Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart and Brahms, almost all of his own compositions (none of which are in the active repertoire) are atonal. (It is interesting, in this regard, to note that Schnabel was a close friend of Arnold Schoenberg, his Austrian-American compatriot, who was famous as a pioneering composer of atonal and twelve-tone music.)

They are "difficult" yet fascinating and complex works, and are marked by genuine originality of style. Composers Ernst Krenek and Roger Sessions have commented that they show signs of undoubted genius (see biography of Schnabel by Cesar Saerchinger). Schnabel's list of compositions eventually included three symphonies, a piano concerto, a piano sonata (premiered by Eduard Erdmann at the 1925 Venice ISCM Festival^[13]) and five string quartets, amongst various smaller works.

In recent years, a number of his compositions (notably championed by the violinist, Paul Zukofsky) have been recorded and made available on CD, including three of his string quartets, the three symphonies, a rhapsody for orchestra, and four solo piano works: his Sonata, Dance Suite, Piece in Seven Movements (1935–37) and Seven Pieces (1947).

Compositions[link]

Chamber Works[link]

• Duodecimet, chamber orchestra
• Piano Quintet
• Sonata for Solo Cello
• Sonata for Solo Violin
• Sonata for Violin and Piano
• String Quartet No. 1
• String Quartet No. 2
• String Quartet No. 3
• String Quartet No. 4
• String Quartet No. 5
• String Trio

Orchestral Works[link]

• Piano Concerto (Intermezzo & Rondo)
• Rhapsody for Orchestra
• Symphony No. 1
• Symphony No. 2
• Symphony No. 3

Choral Works[link]

• Dance and Secret
• Joy and Peace

Songs[link]

• Early Songs (Frühe Lieder), medium voice and piano
• Notturno, medium voice

Solo Piano[link]

• Dance Suite
• Piece in Seven Movements
• Seven Piano Pieces
• Sonata for Piano
• Three Piano Pieces

Quotations[link]

"The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides." - Schnabel, in Chicago Daily News, June 11, 1958.

Further reading[link]

• Schnabel's book My Life and Music (reprinted 1988; Mineola, NY: Dover Publications; ISBN 0-486-25571-9), is a mixture of autobiography and commentary on a variety of musical subjects.
• Saerchinger, C. Artur Schnabel. London, 1957 (with disc.)
• Music and the line of most resistance. Princeton University Press, 1942

External links[link]

• Schnabel Music Foundation
• Peermusic Classical: Artur Schnabel Composer's Publisher and Bio
• listen to moonlight sonata Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata performed by Artur Schnabel
• The online music review La Folia contains an article about Schnabel's compositions and selected recordings
• Free scores by Artur Schnabel at the International Music Score Library Project
• Works by or about Artur Schnabel in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Artur Schnabel at the Notable Names Database

References[link]