Michael Ponti (29 October 1937 – 17 October 2022) was a German-American classical pianist. He was the first to record the complete piano works by
Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
,
Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one o ...
and
Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (; russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин ; – ) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed ...
. He made more than 80 recordings, around 50 of rarely played concertos from the
Romantic period
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
, often the only recording of these works at the time. He played and recorded chamber music with his Ponti-Zimansky-Polasek Trio.
Life and career
Ponti was born in
Freiburg im Breisgau
Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic German, Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population o ...
;
his father was a U.S. diplomat, and his German mother later became an American citizen.
He lived in the United States for most of his childhood and youth.
While still attending school in Washington, D.C., he received piano lessons for ten years,
seven of them with Gilmour McDonald, who had studied with
Leopold Godowsky
Leopold Mordkhelovich Godowsky Sr. (13 February 1870 – 21 November 1938) was a Lithuanian-born American virtuoso pianist, composer and teacher. He was one of the most highly regarded performers of his time, known for his theories concernin ...
.
At age eleven, he played both parts of Bach's
Well-Tempered Clavier
''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', BWV 846–893, consists of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach. In the composer's time, ''clavier'', meaning keyboard, referred to a variety of in ...
in four recitals at the YMCA in Washington from memory.
The family returned to Germany in 1955. Ponti studied at the
Musikhochschule Frankfurt
The Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts (german: Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main, italic=no, link=no, HfMDK) is a state Hochschule for music, theatre and dance in Frankfurt and is the only one of its k ...
until 1961, with
Erich Flinsch who had been a pupil of and an assistant to
Emil von Sauer
Emil Georg Conrad von Sauer (8 October 186227 April 1942) was a German composer, pianist, score editor, and music (piano) teacher. He was a pupil of Franz Liszt and one of the most distinguished pianists of his generation. Josef Hofmann called vo ...
.
He took master classes with
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein ( pl, Artur Rubinstein; 28 January 188720 December 1982) was a Polish Americans, Polish-American pianist. and
Robert Casadesus
Robert Marcel Casadesus (7 April 1899 – 19 September 1972) was a renowned 20th-century French pianist and composer. He was the most prominent member of a distinguished musical family, being the nephew of Henri Casadesus and Marius Casadesus, ...
.
In 1964, Ponti was a finalist of the
Queen Elisabeth Competition
The Queen Elisabeth Competition ( nl, Koningin Elisabethwedstrijd, french: Concours musical international Reine Élisabeth) is an international competition for career-starting musicians held in Brussels. The competition is named after Queen ...
,
and won first prize in the
Busoni Piano Competition in Italy, which opened the way to an international career.
Soon afterwards, he made his Vienna debut by performing Bartók's
2nd Piano Concerto, with
Wolfgang Sawallisch
Wolfgang Sawallisch (26 August 1923 – 22 February 2013) was a German conductor and pianist.
Biography
Wolfgang Sawallisch was born in Munich, the son of Maria and Wilhelm Sawallisch. His father was director of the Hamburg-Bremer-Feuerversich ...
conducting.
For his official New York debut, he played a recital at the
Alice Tully Hall
Alice Tully Hall is a concert hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The hall is named for Alice Tully, a New York performer and philanthropist whose donations assist ...
in March 1972,
and remembered:
In 1976,
Iain Hamilton composed a
piano sonata
A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement ( Scarlatti, Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Berg), others with t ...
for him.
Ponti played with orchestras including the
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR) is a Swiss symphony orchestra, based in Geneva at the Victoria Hall. In addition to symphony concerts, the OSR performs as the opera orchestra in productions at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
History
Er ...
,
Buenos Aires Philharmonic,
Bamberg Symphony Orchestra
The Bamberg Symphony (German: Bamberger Symphoniker – Bayerische Staatsphilharmonie) is a German orchestra based in Bamberg. It is one of the most prestigious orchestras in Germany. The orchestra was formed in 1946 mainly from German musicians ...
and the
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia ( en, National Academy of St Cecilia) is one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, founded by the papal bull ''Ratione congruit'', issued by Sixtus V in 1585, which invoked two saints prom ...
, and with conductors such as
Sixten Ehrling
Evert Sixten Ehrling (3 April 1918 – 13 February 2005) was a Swedish conductor and pianist who, during a long career, served as the music director of the Royal Swedish Opera and the principal conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, a ...
,
Stanisław Skrowaczewski
Stanislaw Pawel Stefan Jan Sebastian Skrowaczewski (; October 3, 1923 – February 21, 2017) was a Polish-American classical conductor and composer.
Biography
Skrowaczewski was born in Lwów, Second Polish Republic (now Lviv, Ukraine). His pa ...
and
Georg Solti. He toured extensively throughout Europe, Egypt, Japan and South America.
In 1974 he toured in Southern Africa and in 1977 in Australia. In 1977, he founded his own trio, with violinist
Robert Zimansky and cellist
Jan Polasek;
they played for 20 years.
In the late 1990s, a stroke left him without the use of his right hand and arm.
Despite extensive rehabilitation, he was unable to return to regular performance or recording. However, he gave concerts of left-handed music for a while.
Ponti died in
Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Garmisch-Partenkirchen (; Bavarian: ''Garmasch-Partakurch''), nicknamed Ga-Pa, is an Alpine ski town in Bavaria, southern Germany. It is the seat of government of the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen (abbreviated ''GAP''), in the O ...
on 17 October 2022, aged 84.
Recordings
Ponti began recording in 1961, Ravel's ''
Jeux d'eau
''Jeux d'eau'' (Italian ''giochi d'acqua'') or "water games", is an umbrella term in the history of gardens for the water features that were introduced into mid-16th century Mannerist Italian gardens.
History
Pools and fountains had been a f ...
'' and ''
Alborada del gracioso
''Alborada del gracioso'' ("The Jester's Aubade", or other translations: see below) is a short orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel first performed in 1919. It is an orchestrated version of one of the five movements of his piano suite ''Miroirs'' ...
'' for Christophorus and Schubert's ''
Wanderer Fantasy
The Fantasie in C major, Op. 15 ( D. 760), popularly known as the ''Wanderer Fantasy'', is a four-movement fantasy for solo piano composed by Franz Schubert in 1822. It is widely considered Schubert's most technically demanding composition for th ...
'' and Beethoven's ''
Eroica Variations
The Variations and Fugue for Piano in E major, Op. 35 are a set of fifteen variations (plus three "bonus" variations) for solo piano composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1802. They are commonly referred to as the ''Eroica Variations'' because a d ...
''.
Ponti was noted for his wide-ranging recordings of the unknown romantic repertoire on the
Vox and Candide labels. He recorded a series of concertos, many of which had never been recorded before, and some of which have been unrecorded since.
The series with Vox of around 50 recordings began in 1968 with a recording of the Piano Concerto No 3 and some etudes by
Ignaz Moscheles
Isaac Ignaz Moscheles (; 23 May 179410 March 1870) was a Bohemian piano virtuoso and composer. He was based initially in London and later at Leipzig, where he joined his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as professor of piano at the ...
, followed the same month by
Adolf von Henselt
Georg Martin Adolf von Henselt (9 or 12 May 181410 October 1889) was a German composer and virtuoso pianist.
Life
Henselt was born at Schwabach, in Bavaria. At the age of three he began to learn the violin, and at five the piano under Josephe vo ...
's Piano Concerto and etudes.
He was the first to record
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan (; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French Jewish composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Lisz ...
's ''Concerto da camera'' No. 2 in 1979.
Composers of the series also included
Mily Balakirev
Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev (russian: Милий Алексеевич Балакирев,BGN/PCGN transliteration of Russian: Miliy Alekseyevich Balakirev; ALA-LC system: ''Miliĭ Alekseevich Balakirev''; ISO 9 system: ''Milij Alekseevič Balakir ...
,
Moritz Moszkowski
Moritz Moszkowski (23 August 18544 March 1925) was a German composer, pianist, and teacher of Polish-Jewish descent. ,
Hans Bronsart von Schellendorff
Hans Bronsart von Schellendorf (11 February 18303 November 1913) was a classical musician and composer who studied under Franz Liszt.
Biography
Hans Bronsart von Schellendorf (also called Hans von Bronsart) was born into a Prussian military fami ...
,
Clara Schumann
Clara Josephine Schumann (; née Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German pianist, composer, and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, she exerted her influence over the course of a ...
and
Sigismond Thalberg
Sigismond Thalberg (8 January 1812 – 27 April 1871) was an Austrian composer and one of the most distinguished virtuoso pianists of the 19th century.
Family
He was born in Pâquis near Geneva on 8 January 1812. According to his own account, h ...
.
He included works by
Eugen d'Albert
Eugen (originally Eugène) Francis Charles d'Albert (10 April 1864 – 3 March 1932) was a Scottish-born pianist and composer.
Educated in Britain, d'Albert showed early musical talent and, at the age of seventeen, he won a scholarship to stud ...
,
William Berwald
William Henry Berwald (1864–1948) was an American composer and conductor of German origin. He published some 400 compositions and won numerous prizes, including the Manuscript Music Society in 1901, the Clemson Gold Medal in 1913, the Prosser ...
,
Alexander Glazunov
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov; ger, Glasunow (, 10 August 1865 – 21 March 1936) was a Russian composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Russian Romantic period. He was director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory between 1905 ...
,
Hermann Goetz
Hermann Gustav Goetz (7 December 1840 – 3 December 1876) was a German composer who spent much of his career in Switzerland. He is best known for his 1872 opera '' Der Widerspänstigen Zähmung'', based on Shakespeare's ''The Taming of the Shre ...
,
Ferdinand Hiller
Ferdinand (von) Hiller (24 October 1811 – 11 May 1885) was a German composer, Conductor (music), conductor, pianist, writer and music director.
Biography
Ferdinand Hiller was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, where his fat ...
,
Henry Litolff
Henry Charles Litolff (7 August 1818 – 5 August 1891) was a British virtuoso pianist, composer of Romantic music, and music publisher. A prolific composer, he is today known mainly for a single brief work – the scherzo from his Concerto S ...
,
Sergei Lyapunov
Sergei Mikhailovich Lyapunov (or Liapunov; russian: Серге́й Миха́йлович Ляпуно́в, ; 8 November 1924) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor.
Life
Lyapunov was born in Yaroslavl in 1859. After the death of his fath ...
,
Nikolai Medtner
Nikolai Karlovich Medtner (russian: Никола́й Ка́рлович Ме́тнер, ''Nikoláj Kárlovič Métner''; 13 November 1951) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. After a period of comparative obscurity in the 25 years immedi ...
,
Joachim Raff,
Carl Reinecke
Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke (23 June 182410 March 1910) was a German composer, conductor, and pianist in the mid-Romantic era.
Biography
Reinecke was born in what is today the Hamburg district of Altona; technically he was born a Dane, as ...
,
Anton Rubinstein
Anton Grigoryevich Rubinstein ( rus, Антон Григорьевич Рубинштейн, r=Anton Grigor'evič Rubinštejn; ) was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor who became a pivotal figure in Russian culture when he founded the Sai ...
,
Xaver Scharwenka
Theophil Franz Xaver Scharwenka (6 January 1850 – 8 December 1924) was a German pianist, composer and teacher of Polish descent. He was the brother of Ludwig Philipp Scharwenka (1847–1917), who was also a composer and teacher of music.
Life ...
,
Christian Sinding,
Bernhard Stavenhagen
Bernhard Stavenhagen (24 November 1862 – 25 December 1914) was a German pianist, composer and conductor. His musical style was influenced by Franz Liszt, and as a conductor he was a strong advocate of new music.
Biography
Born in Greiz, he com ...
and
Karl Tausig.
In addition, he was the first to record the complete piano music of
Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (; russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин ; – ) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed ...
, much of which was otherwise unavailable then, though it has since been recorded by
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy (russian: Влади́мир Дави́дович Ашкена́зи, ''Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazi''; born 6 July 1937) is an internationally recognized solo pianist, chamber music performer, and conductor. He ...
,
Piers Lane
Piers Lane (born 8 January 1958) is an Australian classical pianist. His performance career has taken him to more than 40 countries. His concerto repertoire exceeds 75 works.
Early life
Lane's English father and Australian mother met while au ...
and others. He was again first to record the complete piano music of
Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
and
Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one o ...
.
With the Ponti-Zimansky-Polasek Trio, he recorded chamber music by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. He was the accompanist of
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (28 May 1925 – 18 May 2012) was a German lyric baritone and conductor of classical music, one of the most famous Lieder (art song) performers of the post-war period, best known as a singer of Franz Schubert's Lieder, ...
in a recording of songs by
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...
.
His output amounts to more than 80 discs, and many of his recordings have been re-issued on CD,
such as seven volumes of ''The Romantic Piano Concerto''.
References
Further reading
* Michael Stegemann: ''M. Ponti'', in:
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
'Die'' (; en, " heNew Journal of Music") is a music magazine, co-founded in Leipzig by Robert Schumann, his teacher and future father-in law Friedrich Wieck, and his close friend Ludwig Schuncke. Its first issue appeared on 3 April 1834.
His ...
144, 1983, H. 1, pp. 19–22
* : ''Klavierspiel als Lebensaufgabe – Romantik als Lebenswerk – Virtuosität als Lebenslast. Michael Ponti, dem fabelhaften Pianisten und frühen Archäologen der Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts zum 80. Geburtstag.'' In: ''Musik in Baden-Württemberg.'' 2017/18, vol.. 24, edited by Bärbel Pelker, Stuttgart 2018, pp. 303–309
External links
*
Michael Ponti (Piano)Bach Cantatas Website
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ponti, Michael
1937 births
2022 deaths
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American pianists
20th-century German male classical pianists
21st-century American male musicians
21st-century American pianists
21st-century German male classical pianists
American classical pianists
American male classical pianists
Classical pianists who played with one arm
German classical pianists
Musicians from Freiburg im Breisgau