Leon Fleisher

An American pianist of international renown, Leon Fleisher's career was interrupted for four decades after a degeneration of his right hand, only to resume late in life, in a different repertoire. Born in San Francisco on July 23, 1928, he began piano lessons at the age of four and gave his first recital two years later. A student of Artur Schnabel for ten years (1938-1948), he performed with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Monteux, with whom he learned to conduct. His international breakthrough came in 1952, when he won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition in Brussels. Signed by the Columbia label, he recorded a series of landmark discs for its Epic division, with the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by George Szell. These included piano concertos by Schumann, Grieg and Brahms, Mozart's Concerto No. 25 and the complete Beethoven piano concertos, as well as César Franck's Variations symphoniques and Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. This golden age came to an abrupt end when, in 1964, at the age of thirty-six, Leon Fleisher was forced to stop performing and recording due to a neurological disease, dystonia, which paralyzed his right hand. The pianist, who began to play only with his left hand, notably Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand, reviewed his repertoire and turned to conducting. In 1968, he founded the Washington-based Theater Chamber Players of the Kennedy Center, then went on to conduct the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra (1970) and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (1973). From 1995 onwards, botox injections improved his condition, enabling him to gradually regain the use of both hands, before returning to the stage and studio. After a recital at New York's Carnegie Hall in 2003, he recorded for Vanguard the album Two Hands (2004), which is also the title of an Oscar-nominated documentary about him, as well as a world premiere of Paul Hindemith's Klaviermusic for the left hand. In 2007, Leon Fleisher was honored by the Kennedy Center and published his autobiography My Nine Lives three years later. Professor at the Peabody Conservatory since 1959, as well as at the Curtis Institute and the Royal Academy of Music in Toronto, Fleisher died in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 2, 2020, at the age of 92.

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