Maria Yudina was born to a Jewish family in Russia in 1899. She studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory where one of her classmates was Dmitri Shostakovich. In 1922 she completed studies in theology at after converting to the Orthodox Christian faith. She taught at St. Petersburg Conservatory but was fired because of her religious convictions. After being unemployed and homeless Yudina taught at the Tbilisi State Conservatory in Georgia and the Moscow Conservatory. She also taught at the Gnessin Institute but was fired because of her religious attitudes and advocacy of modern Western music. And her performances were forbidden to be recorded. Among her friends were Shostakovich and Boris Pasternak whose novel Dr. Zhivago had its first reading at Yudina’s apartment in 1947. During one of her concerts, she read Pasternak’s poetry from the stage as an encore and was then banned from performing for five years. One night in 1944 Stalin phoned the main radio station asking for a copy of a recording of Yudina playing Mozart’s 23rd Piano Concerto. The recording did not exist. Government officials woke Yudina in the middle of the night, and drove her to a recording studio where a small orchestra had quickly been assembled for her to record the concerto! A single copy was produced and quickly brought to Stalin. When she was awarded the Stalin Prize she donated the money to the Russian Orthodox Church with prayers for Stalin’s sins. It is thought that he was afraid of her, and never ordered her arrest. The recording was found on Stalin’s turntable after he died. She died in Moscow in 1970.

Philippa Schuyler was born in Harlem in 1931. She was the only child of a prominent black journalist and a white Texan heiress. Schuyler knew the alphabet at 19 months and was able to read and write at the age of two. At four she was playing the music of Mozart and Schumann and began to compose. Schuyler won her first gold medal at age 4 from the National Guild of Piano Teachers. Her IQ at the age of six was 185. Schuyler won eight consecutive prizes from the New York Philharmonic and won gold medals from the Music Education League and from the city of New York. Schuyler’s radio concerts attracted significant press coverage and the admiration of New York’s mayor Fiorello LaGuardia who declared June 19, 1940, Philippa Duke Schuyler Day at the New York World’s Fair where she performed two concerts. By the age of 14, she had composed 200 compositions. and was touring constantly in the United States and overseas. At 15 she graduated from high school and performed with the New York Philharmonic at Lewisohn Stadium and then continued her studies at Manhattanville College. She became a role model for many children in the United States. In later life, Schuyler grew disillusioned with the racial and gender prejudice she encountered in the United States and chose a voluntary exile of performing in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa and Europe. She played at the inauguration of three successive presidents of Haiti and in Africa performed for several heads of state. As a writer 5 of her non-fiction books were published as well as more than 100 newspaper and magazine articles internationally. She spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Although Schuyler engaged a number of affairs she never married. In 1966 she traveled to Vietnam to perform for the troops and various Vietnamese groups. She returned to Vietnam in 1967 as a war correspondent and served as a missionary when she was killed in an army helicopter crash during a mission to evacuate Vietnamese orphans. 2,000 mourners attended her funeral at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. Schuyler’s mother was profoundly affected by her death and committed suicide a few days before the second anniversary of her daughter’s death.

Annie Fischer was born in Budapest to Jewish parents in 1914 and made her debut at 9. She began studying at the Liszt Academy of Music at age 11 where she studied with Erno Dohnanyi. She made her international debut in Zurich at 15. At 19 she won the International Liszt Piano Competition in Budapest, followed by her first foreign concert tours. At 23 she married the musicologist Aladar Toth, with whom she lived in Sweden during WW II, where she concertized and taught. After the war, she played extensively throughout Europe until her U.S. debut in 1961. She was never popular in the U.S. unlike in Japan and Australia, where she enjoyed wonderful success. She made most of her recordings in the 50s including many of Mozart’s Piano concertos. It took her 15 years to record all of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas because she was continuously editing and re-recording them. Her standards were so high that she was never satisfied with them and refused to permit their publication, though, in her last years, she said that they could be released after her death! She played until 1994 and died in Budapest a year later at age 81.

The American pianist, Ruth Laredo was born to a Jewish family in Detroit in 1937 and had her first piano studies with her mother. She continued her training with Rudolph Serkin at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, after which she married Bolivian violinist Jaime Laredo. During the next several years both musicians made numerous appearances throughout the world. In 1962, she made her solo debut in New York and then played all over the USA with many orchestras including those of Wash. D.C., Boston, Cleveland, and Indianapolis and began performing throughout the world. She was a regular participant at the Marlboro Festival and was on the faculty of Kent State and Yale Universities, the Curtis Institute, and the Manhattan School of Music. Ruth Laredo won several awards including a Grammy nomination, and was chosen as one of five pianists to perform at Carnegie Hall for its 90th anniversary. She passed away in 2005 in New York City at 69. She particularly identified with the music of Scriabin, whose Ten Sonatas for Piano she recorded, and with the complete solo piano works of Rachmaninoff which she has also recorded.

Jeanne-Marie Darre was born in France in 1905. She studied at the Paris Conservatory with Isidor Phillipp and Marguerite Long and worked with Faure, St. Saens, and Ravel. She made her debut at 14 and her first recordings at 16. When she was 21 she played all five of St. Saens’s piano Concertos in a single concert. She first pursued her career in Europe, only performing in the United States for the first time in 1961, and returned regularly until she retired from performing in the 1980s. Darre was an acclaimed teacher of promising young pianists. She was a professor at the Paris Conservatory and gave master classes at Ithaca College in New York. Jean Marie Darre was made a member of the Legion of Honor and a Knight of Arts and Letters in France. She was married twice but left no immediate family. She died in 1999 at age 93 in France. During her illustrious career, she frequently performed Ravel’s piano concerto which had been written especially for her teacher Marguerite Long.

Michelle Cann made her orchestral debut at age fourteen and has since performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras including those of Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati and New Jersey. Ms. Cann studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute. She appears frequently in solo and chamber recitals throughout the U.S., China, and South Korea and has appeared as cohost and collaborative pianist on National Public Radio. An award winner at top international competitions, in 2019 Ms.Cann served as the Cincinnati Symphony’s Multicultural Awareness Council Music Innovator in recognition of her role as an African American classical musician who embodies artistry, innovation, and a commitment to education and community engagement. She is the recipient of the 2022 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award. Embracing her dual role as both performer and pedagogue, her responsibilities include teaching residencies at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival and the National Conference of the Music Teachers National Association. As a faculty member of the Curtis Institute of Music, she holds the Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies. A champion of the music of Florence Price, a great, but neglected African American composer of the 20th century, Michelle Caan performed the New York City premiere of the composer’s One Movement Piano Concerto in 2016 and the Philadelphia premiere in 2021.

Yuja Wang was born in Beijing in 1987. Her mother is a dancer and her father is a percussionist. She began studying piano at age 6 and at 7 she began studies at the Central Conservatory in Beijing for 7 years. At 15 Wang entered the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where she studied for five years with Gary Graffman. By age 21 she was already an internationally recognized concert pianist. A big breakthrough for Wang occurred in 2007 when she replaced Martha Argerich playing Tchaikovsky’s 1st piano concerto with the Boston Symphony. She has since gone on to perform with many orchestras in the United States including those in Boston Chicago Cleveland Los Angeles New York Philadelphia San Francisco Santa Cruz and Washington D.C. Internationally she has performed with top orchestras in Berlin, Hong Kong, China, La Scala, Israel, London, Toronto, Paris, Spain, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Rome.
She is a recipient of the Gilmore Young Artist Award, Musical America’s Artist of the Year 2017 the Avery Fisher Career Grant, multiple awards from Gramophone, several Grammy nominations, and competition victories in Germany, Japan and the US. She is one of the most sought-after pianists in the world. On those rare days when she isn’t touring, she lives in NYC.

Guiomar Novaes was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1895 and was the 17th of 19 children. At seven she started taking piano lessons from Luigi Chiaffarelli, a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni. She soon began performing in public and at the age of thirteen, caught the attention of the Brazilian Government, which awarded her a grant for four years of study in Europe. When Novaes auditioned for the Paris Conservatoire, she took first place among 389 candidates. The jury consisted of the legendary musicians, Moskowski, Faure, and Debussy! She studied with Isadore Philipp, who described her as “a true force of Nature.

After graduating from the Paris Conservatoire as First Prize Winner in 1911 Guiomar Novaes toured throughout Europe with great success. She made her United States debut in New York in 1915 and subsequently made numerous US tours. In 1956, the Brazilian government awarded her the Order of Merit as a goodwill ambassador to the United States. Guiomar Novaes died in 1979 at age 84. She was especially praised for her interpretations of the music of Robert Schumann.

Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires Argentina in 1941 to a Catalan father and a Jewish mother. She is widely considered to be one of the greatest pianists of all time. She began kindergarten before she was three and began piano lessons at three. She made her debut at age eight playing piano concertos by Mozart and Beethoven. At age 14 the family moved to Europe where she studied with Friederich Gulda in Austria who was one of her major influences. At 16 she won both the Geneva and the Busoni international competitions and at 24 won the prestigious Chopin competition. Argerich is an astounding virtuoso.

Argerich has promoted young pianists both through festivals and by judging international competitions. Her aversion to publicity and the press has resulted in her remaining out of the limelight for most of her career. Nevertheless, she is widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists in history. She is quite nervous backstage before a performance, typical of many great artists just before a performance. She is sometimes filled with doubt and depression. Yet she performs brilliantly!

She speaks Spanish French Italian German English and Portuguese, has lived in Argentina, Belgium, Switzerland and France, and holds citizenships in Switzerland and Argentina. I have a very special treat for you!

In 1990 Argerich was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. After treatment, the cancer went into remission but came back 5 years later, and spread to her lungs and lymph nodes. After an experimental treatment at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, it went back into remission. As of 2024, Argerich was still cancer-free. She has given several performances with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the magnificent orchestra comprised of young Israeli and Arab musicians playing side by side. It was founded by her fellow Argentine, Daniel Barenboim.

Argerich is the recipient of several Grammy awards, was voted into Gramophone’s Hall of Fame, and is a recipient of the Kennedy Center honors.