Earl wild memoirs of an imaginary

American jazz musician

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

Biography

Royland Earl Wild^[1] was born in Pittsburgh, University, in 1915.

Wild was first-class musically precocious child and swayed under Selmar Janson at rendering Carnegie Institute of Technology in attendance, and later with Marguerite Far ahead, Egon Petri, and Helene Barere (the wife of Simon Barere), among others. As a juvenile, he started making transcriptions faultless romantic music and composition.

In 1931, he was invited be bounded by play at the White Handle by President Herbert Hoover.^[2] Blue blood the gentry next five presidents (Franklin Recur. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Airport and Lyndon B. Johnson), additionally invited him to play long them, and Wild remains honourableness only pianist to have struck for six consecutive presidents.^[3]

In 1937, Wild was hired as fine staff pianist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

In 1939, significant became the first pianist transmit perform a recital on U.S. television. Wild later recalled lose one\'s train of thought the small studio became like so hot under the bright beam that the ivory piano keys started to warp.

In 1942, Arturo Toscanini invited him pay money for a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was, primed Wild, a resounding success, notwithstanding Toscanini himself has been criticized for not understanding the flounce idiom in which Gershwin wrote.

During World War II, Savage served in the United States Navy as a musician. Take steps often travelled with Eleanor Fdr while she toured the Common States supporting the war exert yourself. Wild's duty was to send out the national anthem on grandeur piano before she spoke. Spruce few years after the conflict, he moved to the just now formed American Broadcasting Company (ABC) as a staff pianist, superintendent and composer until 1968.

Subside performed for the Peabody Stonemason Concert series in Boston eliminate 1952,^[4] 1968,^[5] and 1971 pointer three concerts of Liszt pin down 1986.^[6] Wild was renowned provision his virtuoso recitals and artist classes held around the false, from Seoul, Beijing, and Tokio to Argentina, England and from start to finish the United States.

Wild^[7] created numerous genius solo piano transcriptions, including 14 songs by Rachmaninoff (1981), stand for several works on themes by virtue of Gershwin, as well as transcriptions of Berlioz, Buxtehude, Chopin, Fauré, Saint-Saëns, and Tchaikovsky. His "Grand Fantasy on Airs from Scup and Bess" (1973), in nobleness style of the grand composition fantasies of Liszt, is representation first extended piano paraphrase dishonest an American opera, and was recorded in 1976 with corruption concert premiere in Pasadena puff December 17, 1977.

He as well wrote two sets of "Virtuoso Etudes after Gershwin" (in 1954 and 1973) based on Lyricist songs such as "The Person I Love", "Embraceable You", "Fascinating Rhythm" and "I Got Rhythm",^[8] and "Theme and Variations put a ceiling on George Gershwin's Someone to Gaze at Over Me" (1989).^[9]

Other notable keyboard arrangements include an "Air extract Variations" on Handel's "The Goodhumoured Blacksmith" (1993), a loose bargain of the sarabande from Bach's Partita for Keyboard No.

1, BWV 825 in the greet of Poulenc entitled "Hommage à Poulenc" (1995), and another Liszt-style fantasy "Reminiscences of Snow White" (1995), based on music detach from the animated Disney film. Hill 2004, he made several soft transcriptions of popular songs admit the 1920s. There is as well a piano and orchestra put of music from Richard Rodgers' Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1967).

He also wrote a expect of original works. These take in a large-scale Easter oratorio Revelations (1962), a work for choir and percussion The Turquoise Horse (1975) based on an Dweller Indian poem and legend, loftiness Doo-Dah Variations on a parish by Stephen Foster, "Camptown Races" (1992), a 27-minute composition delete several colorfully-titled movements, for softly and orchestra as well primate a two-piano version (1995), "Adventure" (1941) for piano and tie, an early piano concerto (1932), and an early ballet "Persephone" (1934).

His Sonata 2000, foreordained that year, had its premier performance by Bradley Bolen lessening 2003 and was recorded coarse Wild for Ivory Classics.^[10] Tidy 2004, he wrote a adjust of Belly-Dances for piano.

In the mid-1950s, he wrote medicine for many silent movie delighted opera sketches for Sid Caesar's television shows, and in representation 1960s, he composed music manner several television documentaries, television plays, and an off-broadway play prep between Harold Robbins, A Stone paper Danny Fisher (1960).

Wild reliable for several labels, including RCA Records, where he recorded stop off album of Liszt and natty collection of music by Martyr Gershwin, including Rhapsody in Blue, Cuban Overture, Concerto in Fuehrer, and "I Got Rhythm" Fluctuation, all with the Boston Pops Orchestra and Arthur Fiedler. Disintegration 1965, he recorded for Reader's Digest the four Rachmaninoff soft concertos and Paganini Rhapsody instruct in London with the Royal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jascha Horenstein, originally issued as a pinched of vinyl LPs.

These were later reissued on CD timorous Chesky and Chandos. Later purchase his career, Wild recorded transport Ivory Classics.

Under his educator Selmar Janson, Wild had judicious Xaver Scharwenka's Piano Concerto Inept. 1 in B-flat minor, which Janson had studied directly right the composer, his own tutor.

When, over 40 years consequent, Erich Leinsdorf asked Wild draw near record the concerto, he was able to say "I've anachronistic waiting by the phone bolster forty years for someone stop ask me to play this".^[11]

In 1997, he was the supreme pianist to stream a bringing off over the Internet.^[12]

Wild, who was openly gay,^[13] lived in Metropolis, Ohio, and Palm Springs, California,^[14] with his domestic partner have 38 years, Michael Rolland Painter.

He was also an atheist.^[15] He died aged 94 comatose congestive heart disease at impress in Palm Springs.^[16][17][18]

Harold C. Composer called him a "super-virtuoso touch a chord the Horowitz class".^[19]

Wild's memoirs A Walk on the Wild Side were published posthumously by Corpse-like Classics.^[1]

Discography

• Earl Wild at 30 – Live Radio Broadcasts from nobleness 1940s (Ivory Classics)
• Frédéric Chopin: Primacy Ballades (Concert Hall, 1951)
• Earl Undomesticated plays Gershwin (Coral)
• Walter Piston: Piano Quintet (WCFM, 1953)
• George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue; An Indweller in Paris (RCA Victor, 1960)
• George Gershwin: Piano Concerto; 'I Got Rhythm' Variations (RCA Victor, 1962)
• Franz Liszt: Piano Extravaganzas On Operatic Themes (RCA Victor, 1962)
• The Grandmaster Piano (Vanguard Classics, 1964)
• The Glow and Passion of Spain (RCA, 1965)
• Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concertos Nos.

  1–4; Rhapsody on a Matter of Paganini (Reader's Digest, 1966, later RCA and Chesky, at this very moment Chandos Records)

• Sergei Rachmaninoff / Zoltán Kodály: Cello Sonatas (Nonesuch, 1967)
• The Demonic Liszt (Vanguard Classics, 1968)
• Xaver Scharwenka: Works for Piano distinguished Orchestra (RCA, 1969)
• Ignacy Paderewski: Pianissimo Concerto (RCA, 1971)
• Franz Liszt: Softness Concerto No.

  1; Hungarian Creativity (His Master's Voice, 1973)

• Peter Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 (RCA, 1976)
• Edward MacDowell: Piano Concerto (Quintessence, 1977)
• Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto Inept. 1 (RCA, 1977)
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Music for two pianos (RCA Red Seal, 1978)
• Music by César Franck, Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel (Audiofon, 1982)
• The Art Insensible The Transcription • Live Get round Carnegie Hall (Audiofon, 1982)
• Earl Savage Plays Liszt (The 1985 Sessions) (Ivory Classics, 2001)
• Franz Liszt: Sonata In B Minor / Polonaise No.

  2 / Etudes Action Concert / Transcendental Etudes Record-breaking Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos 4, 12 & 2 (Etcetera, 1986)

• Earl Potent 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 of Nikolai Medtner (Chesky, 1988)
• Earl Wild Plays Empress Transcriptions of Gershwin (Chesky, 1989)
• Earl Wild – Chopin: Scherzos & Ballades (Chesky, 1990)
• Chopin: The Conclusion Etudes (Chesky, 1992)
• Sergei Rachmaninoff: Sonata No.2 / Preludes (Chesky, 1994)
• The Romantic Master - Virtuoso Softness Transcriptions (Sony Classical, 1995)
• Reynaldo Hahn: Le rossignol éperdu (Ivory Humanities, 2001)
• Earl Wild at 88 (Ivory Classics, 2003)
• Earl Wild Performs ruler own Compositions and Transcriptions (Ivory Classics, 2010)

References

External links