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Leonid Hambro

Leonid Hambro led many lives from in back of the keyboard of the grand piano, crossing more than from classical to well-known music and again, with aspect trips into comedy. The virtuoso was observed for his prodigious storage, improvising genius, and love of life — which allowed him to try out straight guy as Victor Borge and on the compositions related to P.D.Q. Bach — but also as the state pianist for WQXR, New York’s premiere traditional radio station for many years. He was created in Chicago in 1920, the boy of Simeon Musicant, who was simply himself a boy of Russian music artists (who transformed his name to Hambro when using a lent identity credit card). The elder Hambro was a pianist who produced section of his living playing accompaniment to silent movies. Leonid was a kid prodigy who provided his initial recital in 1925, at age five years of age. He later went to Juilliard and, furthermore to learning there, was a regular accompanist to various other students. He offered stateside in the Navy being a musician through the Second Globe War, and he guaranteed a Naumburg Base Prize in 1946 — he was afterwards appointed the pianist of the brand new York Philharmonic. Being a pianist, Hambro created an enormous repertoire, and understood the vast majority of them from storage, which he often proven in his “Order Shows,” where he provided a summary of 100 parts to audience people and allowed them select the program through the list. He also place that service to make use of in even more pressing situations, such as for example substituting for an sick pianist inside a concert of music by Paul Hindemith, carried out from the composer, at New York’s City Hall, that he discovered the complex function involved on 24 hours’ see. Hambro’s abilities also allowed him to provide as the significant half a relationship with Victor Borge from 1961 until 1970, and produced plenty of laughter aswell as immense fascination with traditional music. And he participated in also less conventional configurations, such as for example teaming up with digital music virtuoso Gershon Kingsley to record George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” being a duet for grand piano and Moog synthesizer, for the record Gershwin Alive & Well & Underground (1970). He participated in Peter Schickele’s P.D.Q. Bach concerts, as well as the Huffnung concerts, both long-established satires of traditional music. Around these engagements and recordings, he previously a serious aspect, and toured thoroughly and appeared being a soloist using the orchestras in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and London. He was also observed for his are a chamber musician, and across his profession performed with Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Leonard Rose, and Pierre Fournier. He was also a pianist for WQXR in NY for 17 years, and through the entire 1960s performed and documented with another WQXR colleague, pianist Jascha Zayde. From 1970 until 1987, he was also the top from the piano faculty on the California Institute from the Arts.

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