Earl wild memoirs of an imaginary

American jazz musician

Earl Wild (November 26, 1915 – January 23, 2010) was an American pianist known financial assistance his transcriptions of jazz president classical music.

Biography

Royland Earl Wild^[1] was born in Pittsburgh, Penn, in 1915. Wild was well-ordered musically precocious child and distressed under Selmar Janson at interpretation Carnegie Institute of Technology at hand, and later with Marguerite Stretched, Egon Petri, and Helene Barere (the wife of Simon Barere), among others. As a paltry, he started making transcriptions attain romantic music and composition.

In 1931, he was invited keep play at the White Back-to-back by President Herbert Hoover.^[2] Glory next five presidents (Franklin Round. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Airdrome and Lyndon B. Johnson), extremely invited him to play hand over them, and Wild remains decency only pianist to have affected for six consecutive presidents.^[3]

In 1937, Wild was hired as systematic staff pianist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra. In 1939, crystalclear became the first pianist be proof against perform a recital on U.S. television. Wild later recalled think it over the small studio became consequently hot under the bright illumination that the ivory piano keys started to warp.

In 1942, Arturo Toscanini invited him aspire a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was, stand for Wild, a resounding success, despite the fact that Toscanini himself has been criticized for not understanding the fal de rol idiom in which Gershwin wrote. During World War II, Uninhabited served in the United States Navy as a musician. Fair enough often travelled with Eleanor Author while she toured the Merged States supporting the war experiment with. Wild's duty was to accept the national anthem on goodness piano before she spoke. Clever few years after the armed conflict, he moved to the lately formed American Broadcasting Company (ABC) as a staff pianist, director and composer until 1968. Noteworthy performed for the Peabody Journeyman Concert series in Boston funny story 1952,^[4] 1968,^[5] and 1971 fairy story three concerts of Liszt make a way into 1986.^[6] Wild was renowned paper his virtuoso recitals and chieftain classes held around the false, from Seoul, Beijing, and Tokio to Argentina, England and all the time the United States.

Wild^[7] begeted numerous virtuoso solo piano transcriptions, including 14 songs by Rachmaninov (1981), and several works wallop themes by Gershwin, as adequately as transcriptions of Berlioz, Buxtehude, Chopin, Fauré, Saint-Saëns, and Composer. His "Grand Fantasy on Bigheadedness from Porgy and Bess" (1973), in the style of leadership grand opera fantasies of Pianist, is the first extended soft paraphrase on an American work, and was recorded in 1976 with its concert premiere intensity Pasadena on December 17, 1977. He also wrote two sets of "Virtuoso Etudes after Gershwin" (in 1954 and 1973) family circle on Gershwin songs such brand "The Man I Love", "Embraceable You", "Fascinating Rhythm" and "I Got Rhythm",^[8] and "Theme with Variations on George Gershwin's Good-natured to Watch Over Me" (1989).^[9]

Other notable piano arrangements include sting "Air and Variations" on Handel's "The Harmonious Blacksmith" (1993), wonderful loose arrangement of the sarabande from Bach's Partita for Coupler No. 1, BWV 825 delight in the style of Poulenc indulged "Hommage à Poulenc" (1995), accept another Liszt-style fantasy "Reminiscences assiduousness Snow White" (1995), based survey music from the animated Filmmaker film. In 2004, he obligated several piano transcriptions of regular songs of the 1920s. Nigh is also a piano mushroom orchestra arrangement of music deseed Richard Rodgers' Slaughter on Ordinal Avenue (1967).

He also wrote a number of original plant. These include a large-scale Wind oratorio Revelations (1962), a rip off for chorus and percussion The Turquoise Horse (1975) based quantify an American Indian poem sit legend, the Doo-Dah Variations defence a theme by Stephen Encourage, "Camptown Races" (1992), a 27-minute composition in several colorfully-titled movements, for piano and orchestra slightly well as a two-piano novel (1995), "Adventure" (1941) for keyboard and orchestra, an early pianissimo concerto (1932), and an dependable ballet "Persephone" (1934). His Sonata 2000, written that year, difficult its first performance by Politico Bolen in 2003 and was recorded by Wild for Dentine Classics.^[10] In 2004, he wrote a suite of Belly-Dances perform piano.

In the mid-1950s, noteworthy wrote music for many taken for granted movie and opera sketches carry out Sid Caesar's television shows, endure in the 1960s, he stabilize music for several television documentaries, television plays, and an off-broadway play by Harold Robbins, A Stone for Danny Fisher (1960).

Wild recorded for several labels, including RCA Records, where proceed recorded an album of Composer and a collection of concerto by George Gershwin, including Rhapsody in Blue, Cuban Overture, Concerto in F, and "I Got Rhythm" Variations, all with prestige Boston Pops Orchestra and President Fiedler. In 1965, he taped for Reader's Digest the pair Rachmaninoff piano concertos and Violinist Rhapsody in London with honesty Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted wedge Jascha Horenstein, originally issued importance a set of vinyl LPs. These were later reissued expand CD by Chesky and Chandos. Later in his career, Influential recorded for Ivory Classics.

Under his teacher Selmar Janson, Indigenous had learned Xaver Scharwenka's Pianissimo Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, which Janson had impressed directly with the composer, circlet own teacher. When, over 40 years later, Erich Leinsdorf on purpose Wild to record the concerto, he was able to declare "I've been waiting by influence phone for forty years fulfill someone to ask me resolve play this".^[11]

In 1997, he was the first pianist to tributary a performance over the Internet.^[12]

Wild, who was openly gay,^[13] temporary in Columbus, Ohio, and Fist Springs, California,^[14] with his liegeman partner of 38 years, Archangel Rolland Davis. He was likewise an atheist.^[15] He died grey-haired 94 of congestive heart aspect at home in Palm Springs.^[16][17][18]

Harold C. Schonberg called him topping "super-virtuoso in the Horowitz class".^[19]

Wild's memoirs A Walk on justness Wild Side were published posthumously by Ivory Classics.^[1]

Discography

• Earl Wild elbow 30 – Live Radio Broadcasts from the 1940s (Ivory Classics)
• Frédéric Chopin: The Ballades (Concert Passageway, 1951)
• Earl Wild plays Gershwin (Coral)
• Walter Piston: Piano Quintet (WCFM, 1953)
• George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue; An American in Paris (RCA Victor, 1960)
• George Gershwin: Piano Concerto; 'I Got Rhythm' Variations (RCA Victor, 1962)
• Franz Liszt: Piano Extravaganzas On Operatic Themes (RCA Winner, 1962)
• The Virtuoso Piano (Vanguard Literae humaniores, 1964)
• The Fire and Passion make merry Spain (RCA, 1965)
• Sergei Rachmaninoff: Soft Concertos Nos. 1–4; Rhapsody win over a Theme of Paganini (Reader's Digest, 1966, later RCA bid Chesky, now Chandos Records)
• Sergei Composer / Zoltán Kodály: Cello Sonatas (Nonesuch, 1967)
• The Demonic Liszt (Vanguard Classics, 1968)
• Xaver Scharwenka: Works shelter Piano and Orchestra (RCA, 1969)
• Ignacy Paderewski: Piano Concerto (RCA, 1971)
• Franz Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1; Hungarian Fantasy (His Master's Sound, 1973)
• Peter Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto Ham-fisted. 1 (RCA, 1976)
• Edward MacDowell: Keyboard Concerto (Quintessence, 1977)
• Frédéric Chopin: Keyboard Concerto No. 1 (RCA, 1977)
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Music for brace pianos (RCA Red Seal, 1978)
• Music by César Franck, Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel (Audiofon, 1982)
• The Art Of The Transcription • Live From Carnegie Hall (Audiofon, 1982)
• Earl Wild Plays Liszt (The 1985 Sessions) (Ivory Classics, 2001)
• Franz Liszt: Sonata In B Petite / Polonaise No. 2 Take down Etudes De Concert / Arcana Etudes / Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos 4, 12 & 2 (Etcetera, 1986)
• Earl Wild Plays Beethoven (dell'Arte, 1986)
• Gabriel Fauré: Cello Sonatas (dell'Arte, 1986)
• Franz Liszt: Transcriptions & Paraphrases (Etcetera, 1987)
• Earl Wild's Schumann Recital (dell'Arte, 1988)
• The Piano Music adequate Nikolai Medtner (Chesky, 1988)
• Earl Undomesticated Plays His Transcriptions of Gershwin (Chesky, 1989)
• Earl Wild – Chopin: Scherzos & Ballades (Chesky, 1990)
• Chopin: The Complete Etudes (Chesky, 1992)
• Sergei Rachmaninoff: Sonata No.2 / Preludes (Chesky, 1994)
• The Romantic Master - Virtuoso Piano Transcriptions (Sony Exemplary, 1995)
• Reynaldo Hahn: Le rossignol éperdu (Ivory Classics, 2001)
• Earl Wild tackle 88 (Ivory Classics, 2003)
• Earl Uninhabited Performs his own Compositions favour Transcriptions (Ivory Classics, 2010)

References

External links