The Most Memorable Composer Christmases: Mahler, Rachmaninoff, and More

by Emily E. Hogsta

Everyone approaches the winter holidays differently: some people feel excitement, while others feel dread. It can be a season of celebration, crushing loneliness, and everything in between.

The great composers also experienced a wide variety of Christmas celebrations. Today, we’re looking at five memorable Christmases from the lives of five great composers. (Read Part 1 here: The Most Memorable Composer Christmases: Chopin, Schumann, and More)

Mahler’s Devastating Breakup – 1884

Gustav Mahler

In mid-1883, 23-year-old Gustav Mahler took a job conducting opera at the Königliches Theater in Kassel, Germany.

While there, he began working with 25-year-old coloratura soprano Johanna Richter and fell in love with her. It was his first intense love affair.

We are not sure if Richter reciprocated Mahler’s feelings quite as intensely; only one letter from her survives.

In 1884, he began composing for her, writing lyrics based on folksongs and setting them to music. He called the resulting song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, or Songs of a Wayfarer. His December 1884 was absorbed by the project.   

Despite his passion for Richter, the couple was ultimately doomed.

He spent New Year’s Eve of 1884 with her and wrote to a friend about the experience:

I spent yesterday evening alone with her, both of us silently awaiting the arrival of the new year.

Her thoughts did not linger over the present, and when the clock struck midnight, and tears gushed from her eyes, I felt terrible that I, I was not allowed to dry them.

She went into the adjacent room and stood for a moment in silence at the window, and when she returned, silently weeping, a sense of inexpressible anguish had arisen between us like an everlasting partition wall, and there was nothing I could do but press her hand and leave.

As I came outside, the bells were ringing, and the solemn chorale could be heard from the tower.

Although the relationship didn’t work out, Mahler did reuse ideas from Songs of a Wayfarer in his first symphony, which he composed between 1887 and 1888. He wasn’t about to let his holiday heartbreak go to waste!

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel Is Disappointed by the Christmas Singing of Papal Singers – 1839

Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel

Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny Mendelssohn were two of the most talented child prodigies in the history of music. They remained close for their entire lives.

Felix, however, was encouraged to pursue a musical career, while Fanny’s musical accomplishments were viewed as mere feminine adornments. (Luckily, her husband understood her talent and encouraged her music-making.)

Long story short, Felix got support that she never did, and in 1830, when Fanny was 24, and Felix was 21, the family sent him on a ten-month trip to Italy…without Fanny. The trip was formative, and Fanny was fascinated by the stories of his travels.   

Happily, Fanny got to go eventually. Between 1839 and 1840, Fanny, her husband, and her baby son Sebastian took their own trip to Italy, following in Felix’s footsteps.

On 1 January 1840, she wrote to her brother, sharing some observations about musical life in Rome:

We’re enjoying a pleasant life here. We have a comfortable, sunny apartment and thus far have enjoyed the nicest weather almost continuously. And since we’re in no particular hurry, we’ve been viewing the attractions of Rome at our leisure, little by little.

It’s only in the realm of music, however, that I haven’t experienced anything edifying since I’ve been in Italy.

I heard the Papal singers 3 times – once in the Sistine Chapel on the first Sunday in Advent, once in the same place on Christmas Eve, and once in St. Peter’s basilica on Christmas day – and have to report that I was astounded that the performances were far from perfect.

Right now, they seem to lack good voices and sing completely out of tune…

One can’t part with one’s trained conceptions so easily.

Church music in Germany, performed with a chorus consisting of a few hundred singers and a suitably large orchestra, assaults both the ear and the memory in such a way that, in comparison, the pair of singers here seemed quite thin in the wide expanses of St. Peter’s.

With respect to the music, a few passages stood out as particularly beautiful. On Christmas Eve, for instance, after the parts had dragged on separately for a long time, there was a lively, 4-part fugal passage in A-minor that was very nice.

I later discovered that it began precisely at the moment when the Pope entered the chapel, and I didn’t know it at the time because women, unfortunately, are placed in a section behind a grille from which they cannot see anything.

This section is far away, and in addition, the air is darkened by the smoke from candles and incense.

On the other hand, I could at least occasionally see the officials on Christmas day in St. Peter’s very well, and found them quite splendid and amusing.

We naturally had a Christmas tree, because of Sebastian, and constructed it out of cypress, myrtle, and orange branches. The branches were very lovely, but it wasn’t the best-looking tree, and Sebastian and I attempted to outdo each other the entire day in feeling homesick.

Johannes Brahms Surprises Clara Schumann – 1865

Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann’s wife, virtuoso pianist Clara Schumann, stayed close friends until the end of their lives.

They never had a traditional romance, but they loved each other deeply, and over their decades-long relationship, Brahms spent many holidays with Clara and her children.

At Christmas 1865, Johannes was 32, and Clara was 46. Both had busy performing careers that necessitated frequent travel, and Clara assumed that she wouldn’t be seeing Johannes for the holidays.   

She sent him a traveling bag as a Christmas gift. With the gift, she included a letter talking about her daughter Julie, who had recently been ill.

She wrote, “Thank heaven we have fairly good news of Julie. She has got over the danger of typhoid, but it will be a long time before she has completely recovered.”

The family was worried about Julie’s health, and they didn’t even bother lighting candles on the tree that year.

But then the door opened – and Brahms appeared! He had made a seven-hour journey to Düsseldorf to surprise the family and check in on Julie himself.

Clara wrote in her diary that she was “very pleased and excited.”

Read our article about Christmas with Brahms.

Rachmaninoff Flees Russia – 1917

Kubey-Rembrandt Studios: Sergei Rachmaninoff, 1921

The Russian Revolution began in February 1917, leading to Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication in March and a provisional government taking power.

During that year’s October Revolution, a Bolshevik insurrection overthrew the provisional government. Once the Bolsheviks took power, a broader civil war broke out.

The conflict impacted Rachmaninoff’s life deeply. In the spring of 1917, he returned from touring to find that his estate had been seized by the Social Revolutionary Party. He departed, disgusted, and vowed never to return.

He and his family moved to Moscow. As tensions rose throughout the fall, he made edits to his first piano concerto with the sound of bullets flying in the background.   

During this tense time, he received an invitation to give a series of recitals in Scandinavia. He accepted because it would give him and his family an excuse to flee the country.

On 22 December 1917, the Rachmaninoffs got on a train in St. Petersburg, crowded with terrified passengers who feared arrest. Fortunately, the officials who met them were kind.

The following day, they arrived at the Finnish border. To get across it, Rachmaninoff, his wife, and two daughters had to travel in an open peasant sleigh during a blizzard.

They arrived in Stockholm on Christmas Eve. Exhausted, the family stayed in their hotel.

After escaping Russia, Rachmaninoff would go on to a celebrated performing career, but he would compose less and less. Later in his life, he would remark, “I left behind my desire to compose: losing my country, I lost myself also.”

Leonard Bernstein Conducts the Historic Berlin Wall Concert – 1989

Leonard Bernstein

In November 1989, the Berlin Wall was taken down, signaling the demise of the so-called Iron Curtain that had hung across Europe for a generation.

Conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein helped to organise a performance at the present-day Konzerthaus Berlin. This venue had been burned out during World War II but was reconstructed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, opening just a few years before this concert.

Musicians from all around the world participated, including men and women from Leningrad, Dresden, New York, London, and Paris.

Together on Christmas Day 1989, they performed a concert celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Bernstein programmed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and changed the Ode to Joy to the Ode to Freedom.

It was broadcast all over the world and became one of the most famous orchestral performances of the twentieth century, seen live by around 100 million viewers. How’s that for a memorable Christmas?

Frédéric Chopin and George Sand: The Real Story Behind Their Relationship

 by Emily E. Hogstad  November 15th, 2023

It’s one of the most romanticized love affairs in music history: dashing cross-dressing woman novelist George Sand becomes obsessed with, and then seduces, the sickly consumptive pianist-composer Frédéric Chopin.

But how much of this story is real, and how much of it is just mythologizing?

Today we are looking at the real story behind the love affair between George Sand and Frédéric Chopin.

George Sand’s Childhood and Marriage

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil was born on 1 July 1804 in Paris.

As a girl, she lived with her grandmother at the family manor house in Nohant, roughly three hundred kilometers from Paris.

In 1821, her grandmother died, and Aurore inherited the manor. The house at Nohant became a home base for her throughout her life.

In 1822, at the age of eighteen, Dupin married a man named Casimir Dudevant, whose biggest accomplishment in life ended up being George Sand’s ex.

They had two children together: a son named Maurice in 1823 and a daughter named Solange in 1828. (That said, Solange’s paternity is questioned.)

After almost a decade, the marriage deteriorated. Mrs. Dudevant left her husband in 1831 and, scandalously, began seeing other men. In 1835, she separated from him legally and took custody of her two young children.

George Sand’s Writing Career

In her twenties, the former Mrs. Dudevant embarked on romantic relationships with a wide variety of accomplished artistic men, including novelist Jules Sandeau, writer Prosper Mérimée, dramatist Alfred du Musset, and others. (She also developed intense romantic feelings for actress Marie Dorval. The two would remain friends for the rest of their lives.)

The former Mrs. Dudevant’s writing career began in the early 1830s, when she began collaborating on stories with her lover Jules Sandeau. They signed their joint efforts “Jules Sand.”

It quickly became obvious that she was a very talented writer. In 1832, at the age of twenty-eight, she wrote a novel on her own and published it under the pseudonym George Sand.

It wasn’t long before this divorced mother of two was one of the most respected authors in Europe. Her work was actually more popular in England than either Hugo’s or Balzac’s!

As her career progressed, she didn’t restrict herself to just novels: she also wrote literary criticism, theatrical works, political commentary (she was a socialist), and more.

The Meeting of George Sand and Frédéric Chopin

Josef Danhauser: Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano

Apparently, Sand was intrigued by Chopin even before they met. It is believed she encouraged their mutual friend Franz Liszt to arrange an introduction.

On 24 October 1836, in the salon of fellow author (and Liszt’s mistress) Marie d’Agoult, George Sand and Frédéric Chopin met each other for the first time.

Chopin was initially repulsed by Sand, reportedly asking Liszt, “Is she really a woman?”

Despite this rocky first impression, Sand still remained intrigued by him.

It seems they were not close before 1838. In May of that year, she asked a mutual friend in a letter if he was still engaged (at one point, he had been betrothed to his former pupil Maria Wodzińska). If so, Sand wrote, she would back off. However, it turns out that the relationship with Wodzińska was well and truly over.

It’s unclear exactly how, but eventually Chopin and Sand became friends, and then lovers.  

Their Trip to Majorca

To celebrate their new partnership, Sand planned a trip to Majorca, Spain, over the winter of 1838. She was hopeful that the change in climate would help Chopin’s declining health.

The trip started off on a high note. “The sky is like turquoise, the sea is like emeralds, the air as in Heaven,” he wrote in a letter.

Chopin ended up composing some of his best-known works in Majorca, including his 24 Preludes. The work tied most closely to this place in time is undoubtedly the Raindrop Prelude, said to be inspired by the rain dripping off the eaves of their lodgings.    

The trip became a struggle when, as the Raindrop Prelude suggests, the winter weather turned damp. Instead of improving, his health deteriorated. The couple’s gloomy accommodations didn’t help matters: they had sought refuge in a deserted monastery in Valldemossa.

Soon Catholic locals began viewing the unmarried divorcée and her invalid partner with suspicion. The couple’s reputation grew even worse when rumors spread that Chopin’s cough would spread communicable disease. In the end, the locals grew so impossible to work with that Sand was eventually forced to lug a handcart to the capital city of Palma just to load up on basic supplies.

Their nightmare came to an end ten weeks after they arrived, but unfortunately their return voyage to Barcelona occurred during rough seas, and Chopin suffered from seasickness on the way home.

Life in France

Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand by Eugène Delacroix

A much more agreeable destination turned out to be Sand’s country home in Nohant. Chopin and Sand settled into a schedule of spending half the year in Nohant and the other half in Paris (albeit in separate apartments).

Although they never officially moved in together full-time, in 1842, they did take the step of renting adjacent apartments.

Chopin ended up writing many great works at Nohant. Today the home is a museum.     

The Breakup

So why did these two titans of the Romantic Era break up?

One blow was Sand’s novel Lucrezia Floriani, which starred a sickly Eastern European prince being cared for by Lucrezia, the protagonist. The Polish Chopin grew increasingly resentful of this particular creative choice, feeling that his health troubles had become nothing but grist for Sand’s creative mill.

A second blow came when Chopin sided with Sand’s daughter, Solange, in various fierce mother-daughter arguments. Sand interpreted Chopin’s loyalty to Solange as his being in love with her. It didn’t help matters that Sand’s other child, Maurice, didn’t like Chopin, either.

Ultimately, after almost a decade together, the two great artists split up for good.

On July 28, 1847, Sand wrote to him: “Goodbye, my friend. May you soon be cured of all your ills, as I hope that now you may be…. If you are, I will offer thanks to God for this fantastic ending of a friendship which has, for nine years, absorbed both of us. Send me your news from time to time. It is useless to think that things can ever again be the same between us.”

Backlash to the Breakup

Sand herself predicted the backlash that would come: “His own particular circle will, I know, take a very different view [of the breakup],” she wrote. “He will be looked upon as a victim, and the general opinion will find it pleasanter to believe that I, in spite of my age, have got rid of him in order to take another lover…” Her predictions about public opinion turned out to be cannily accurate.

It’s also noteworthy that their relationship is often boiled down – wrongly – as one between nurse and caretaker. In his own writings, Liszt, for whatever reason, enjoyed emphasizing Chopin’s weakness and medical troubles, and therefore Sand’s role as his patient helper. However, Sand seemed to chafe against the idea. The relationship was simply more complex than that. She wrote of the Majorca disaster, “It was quite enough for me to handle, going alone to a foreign country with two children…without taking on an additional emotional burden and a medical responsibility.”

Sand and Chopin’s Final Meeting

Both Chopin and Sand left accounts of their final meeting. Comparing them is fascinating.

“I saw him again briefly in March 1848,” Sand wrote in her autobiography. “I clasped his trembling, icy hand. I wanted to talk to him; he vanished. It was my turn to say he no longer loved me.”

Chopin, on the other hand, wrote a longer account in a March 1848 letter to Solange: “Yesterday… I met your Mother in the doorway of the vestibule….” He asked whether Sand had any news about Solange, and let Sand know that Solange had had a baby, since mother and daughter weren’t on good terms at the time. He “bowed and went downstairs.” Then he decided he had more to say, so he asked a servant to bring her to him again. They talked some more. “She asked me how I am; I replied that I am well, and asked the concierge to open the door.”

Chopin died a little more than a year later. Sand opted not to attend his funeral. She lived many more years and wrote many more books.

Despite that tragic end to their love affair – or maybe because of it – George Sand and Frédéric Chopin remain one of the most iconic couples of the Romantic Era.

The Seven Most Popular Piano Concertos on YouTube

by Emily E. Hogstad

YouTube is full of brilliant piano concerto performances, but a handful have attracted truly massive global audiences.

From Rachmaninoff (lots and lots of Rachmaninoff…) to Mozart to Chopin, here are the seven most viewed piano concerto performances on YouTube, along with our commentary about each, in reverse countdown order.

And not to sound like a YouTube title cliche, but the most popular one might surprise you!

7. Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 by Olga Scheps

Olga Scheps is a German pianist born in 1984, who is especially passionate about the works of Chopin.

This performance of his first piano concerto was recorded in 2014 with the Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio.

Scheps brings an elegant, lyrical touch to this repertoire. Every phrase conjures some new gradation of emotion. She concentrates hard while still being clearly delighted by the music she’s playing, and that combination is irresistible.

The performance’s intimate atmosphere is enhanced by the smaller chamber orchestra.

6. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 by Yunchan Lim 

Yunchan Lim’s winning performance from the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition made him a classical music superstar overnight…and this performance is a major reason why. Even videos just commenting on this video have millions of views!

Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto is notorious for its countless demands, both technical and emotional, but Lim vanquishes all of them with an ease that verges on preternatural.

His poise, control, and intensity are jaw-dropping. (Did we mention he’s only eighteen in this video?)

This performance is a must-listen for any modern piano lover.

The performance went so viral that the Van Cliburn Competition actually posted a second version featuring remastered audio. That one has 4.9 million views of its own. If you combine the two, it would place number four on this list.

5. Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1

Here’s another competition-winning video that went viral: a performance of Chopin’s first piano concerto by Seong-Jin Cho, who won the 2015 Chopin International Piano Competition.

Cho’s interpretation is refined and heartfelt, with a natural elegance that makes even difficult passages seem effortless.

It’s sheer joy to watch him finish the concerto; he looks like he’s in his own little world of musicmaking, and we’ve been lucky enough to get to spy on it.

4. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 by Nobuyuki Tsujii  

The musicality of blind pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii touches audiences deeply.

He learns music by ear, which enables him to learn (and hear) this music in a different way from other performers.

His technical mastery is remarkable, as is his heartbreaking sincerity.

The YouTube heatmap reveals that the most popular part of the performance is the ebullient ending from 30:45 on, where all of the sad loneliness of the first two movements turns into hard-won triumph. It’s mysterious and moving.

3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 by Yeol Eum Son  

This performance is from the final round of the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition, where pianist Yeol Eum Son would go on to win the silver medal.

It’s a lovely performance. Her touch throughout is beautifully measured. Every phrase has something to say, and serves a purpose within the longer musical line.

The concerto’s most famous part is its slow movement, which begins at 15:05. It was used in the movie Elvira Madigan, which has become the concerto’s nickname.

2. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 by Anna Fedorova  

Anna Fedorova’s rendition of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto is the kind of performance that hits a listener squarely in the center of the chest: full-blooded and deeply personal.

Filmed at the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, this video is shot in a way that emphasises the architecture of the hall, as well as the way that the hall’s audience is wrapped tightly around the musicians. It lends a sense of intimacy to both the music-making and the cinematography.

Fedorova’s ability to balance power and restraint makes the concerto especially moving. Listen at 4:20 to how she treats the dreamy ascending and descending passages, then immediately follows those up with a quicksilver fleetness.

1. Cat Concerto from Tom and Jerry by Yannie Tan

66 million views   

Here’s the most-viewed piano concerto video on YouTube. Turns out it’s not actually a piano concerto at all: it’s a version of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, as arranged for the cartoon Tom and Jerry, performed by pianist Yannie Tan.

It’s cute, fun, and completely unexpected. The result is pure piano joy…complete with a cat ear costume.

Conclusion

From Rachmaninoff’s second concerto to Rachmaninoff’s third concerto, from Chopin to Chopin, and from Mozart to a concerto for a cat, all seven of these performances prove how compelling piano concerto videos can be to online audiences.

Which one of these seven is your favourite? And which pianist do you think will be the first to break 100 million views?

Ten Greatest Women Pianists of All Time

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

From the time the piano became a popular instrument in the mid-eighteenth century, thousands of accomplished women pianists have taken to the stage.

So many women have done so that it’s impossible to make an objective list of the ten greatest women pianists of all time.

However, there’s nothing keeping music lovers from creating their own subjective lists.

Here’s one such subjective list, featuring some of the greatest women pianists who were born between 1751 and 1987.

Let us know who would be on your list!

Maria Anna Mozart (1751–1829) 

Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed Nannerl during her childhood, was Wolfgang Amadeus’s older sister.

Their father, Leopold, began teaching her keyboard when she was seven years old. She immediately proved to be a prodigy and was a full-blown virtuoso by eleven.

Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni © madamegilflurt.com

When the Mozart family first began touring Europe, Nannerl was initially the bigger draw and was often given top billing over her brother.

During her career, she played for aristocrats and royal families in Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Britain.

After she turned eighteen and became of marriageable age, her family withdrew her from the concert platform. She was forced to watch from the sidelines as Wolfgang continued his travels and musical education in Italy without her.

She married a widowed magistrate in 1784 and moved to a home thirty kilometres from the family hometown of Salzburg. She had three children of her own and also helped to raise her husband’s five children from his previous marriages.

She continued to play the piano for multiple hours a day. Even after her husband died, she continued playing and teaching.

Maria Szymanowska (1789–1831) 

Maria Szymanowska was born to a wealthy family in Warsaw in 1789.

We don’t know for sure how she began her musical life, but it seems likely that she studied with Frédéric Chopin’s teacher, Józef Elsner. She gave her first public recitals in 1810, the year of Chopin’s birth.

She also married in 1810 to a man named Józef Szymanowski. They would have three children together, including a set of twins. They separated in 1820.

Maria Szymanowska

Szymanowska made several tours during her marriage, but her touring activities ramped up in the 1820s. During that decade alone, she appeared in Germany, France, Britain, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and Russia.

She composed works for piano that were deeply influenced by her Polish roots. (Some historians have argued that they influenced a young Chopin.) She became a great favorite in musical salons, and many composers dedicated works to her, including Beethoven.

During her visit to St. Petersburg, she was named First Pianist to the Russian Imperial Court. In 1828, she decided to settle in St. Petersburg, but she died in the 1831 cholera epidemic, cutting short a major career.

Clara Wieck Schumann (1819–1896) 

Clara Wieck was born in 1819 to piano teacher and music shop owner Friedrich Wieck. As soon as Clara was born, he decided he wanted to mold her into a great piano virtuoso.

Robert and Clara Schumann, 1850

Years of intense study followed. True to Friedrich’s prophecy, Clara proved to be one of the most talented pianists of her generation, male or female.

Her life – and classical music – was changed forever when, in the 1830s, she fell in love with her father’s student Robert Schumann.

Her father protested against the marriage for a variety of reasons, but as soon as she was legally able to, they were married in 1840.

The Schumanns had eight children together, but not even motherhood could keep Clara from continuing her performing career.

After Robert’s mental health collapsed and he died in 1856, Clara continued performing, both out of economic necessity and as a kind of therapy to guide her through her grief.

Throughout her life, she advocated for works by her husband, Chopin, Beethoven, and, perhaps most importantly, Brahms, among many others.

She also reshaped the role of the modern virtuoso, helping to popularize the modern recital format and playing from memory onstage.

Teresa Carreño (1853–1917) 

Teresa Carreño was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1853.

When she was nine, the family emigrated to New York City, where she began her concert career in earnest. When she was ten, she played for Abraham Lincoln in the White House.

She embarked on her first European tour in 1866. She spent years there, befriending many of the giants of the art: Rossini, Gounod, and Liszt, among others.

Teresa Carreño

In 1873, she married virtuoso violinist Emile Sauret and the following year gave birth to their daughter, Emelita. Sadly, the marriage didn’t last long, and Carreño and Sauret split up.

She would go on to remarry three more times, and have four more children (one of them, Teresita, would become a concert pianist in her own right). Her turbulent love life would become part of her legend.

During the 1870s and 1880s, she spent most of her time touring America, with a couple of trips to Venezuela sprinkled in. In 1889, she returned to Europe to great success. A final large tour to America took place in the 1890s. She died in 1917 in New York City.

Conductor Henry Wood memorably wrote about her:

It is difficult to express adequately what all musicians felt about this great woman who looked like a queen among pianists – and played like a goddess. The instant she walked onto the platform her steady dignity held her audience who watched with riveted attention while she arranged the long train she habitually wore.

Dame Myra Hess (1890–1965) 

Myra Hess was born in London in 1890 and began her piano studies at the age of five. She entered the Royal Academy of Music when she was twelve.

She made her orchestral debut when she was seventeen, playing the fourth Beethoven piano concerto under conductor Thomas Beecham.

Myra Hess

Her career plateaued in the late 1910s due to World War I, but she returned to touring as soon as it was over.

However, arguably her greatest artistic triumph happened during World War II, when she organized nearly seventeen hundred concerts over the course of the conflict, playing in 150.

Concert halls had to be blacked out at night to avoid bombing by Nazi planes. So Hess organized lunchtime daytime concerts at the National Gallery in London.

If bombing prevented a performance from taking place, the series would be relocated temporarily, before returning to the gallery.

Over 800,000 people attended her lunchtime concerts, making it one of the most effective morale boosters of the war.

She suffered from a stroke in 1961 and died from a heart attack in 1965.

Alicia de Larrocha (1923–2009) 

Alicia de Larrocha was born in 1923 into a family of pianists in Barcelona, Spain. She began studying piano when she was three with teacher Frank Marshall, and gave her first performance when she was five. Marshall would remain her only teacher after the age of three.

She began touring internationally in her mid-twenties and enjoyed a vibrant performing career for decades thereafter.

Alicia de Larrocha

De Larrocha was especially celebrated for her advocacy of Spanish composers like Granados, de Falla, and Albéniz.

But her expertise didn’t stop there: her performances of the Germanic composers like Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Mozart were also highly praised.

She even recorded Liszt, despite the fact that she was less than five feet tall and her hands were small.

She recorded extensively throughout her career and won four Grammy awards between 1975 and 1992.

She retired in 2003 after seventy-five years of public performances. She died in 2009, at the age of 86.

Martha Argerich (1941–) 

Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1941, to a Spanish-Russian family. She began learning the piano at the age of three and gave her debut concert at the age of eight.

In 1955, when Martha was fourteen, the Argerich family moved to Vienna. She began studying there with iconoclast pianist Friedrich Gulda. Two years later, she won both the Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition.

Martha Argerich with The Philadelphia Orchestra, 2008 © carnegiehall.org

Despite her success, she found herself in a musical crisis, and she quit playing for three years. Thankfully, she changed her mind, returning to music, and she won the International Chopin Piano Competition in 1965, when she was twenty-four. It was the kickoff to a decades-long performing career.

In the 1980s, Argerich revealed that performing solo recitals made her feel lonely, so since that time, she has focused on repertoire that includes other musicians, such as concertos and chamber music.

In addition to her storied career as a performing artist, she has worked as a teacher and mentor. She is the president of the International Piano Academy Lake Como and has appeared regularly on competition juries.

As of 2019, at the age of 78, she was still performing the Tchaikovsky piano concerto. As one critic wrote in 2016, “Her playing is still as dazzling, as frighteningly precise, as it has always been; her ability to spin gossamer threads of melody as matchless as ever.”

Mitsuko Uchida (1948–) 

Mitsuko Uchida was born outside of Tokyo in 1948. Her family moved to Vienna when she was twelve, and she began studying at the Vienna Academy of Music. She made her recital debut in Vienna at fourteen.

Mitsuko Uchida © Geoffroy Schied

In 1970, when she was twenty-two, she won the second prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition. The prize marked the beginning of a decades-long career.

She has become especially renowned as an interpreter of Mozart. She has recorded all of Mozart’s piano sonatas and concertos, a staggering accomplishment.

If that wasn’t enough, she decided to re-record the Mozart concertos, while also conducting. In 2011, she won a Grammy award for the first record in the series.

She is also famous for being the artistic director at the prestigious Marlboro Music School and Festival, a position she has held since 1999. (She currently shares the position with fellow pianist Jonathan Biss.)

Even today, in her mid-seventies, she is still performing and recording.

Hélène Grimaud (1969–) 

Hélène Grimaud was born in 1969 in Aix-en-Provence, France. She began playing the piano at seven.

She began studying at the Paris Conservatoire in 1982 when she was thirteen, and gave her recital debut in Tokyo five years later.

Hélène Grimaud

She gave important debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1995 and New York Philharmonic in 1999.

In 2002, she signed with the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label, and in the two decades since has released a number of well-received recordings.

She is noted for her wide interests outside of music. She is deeply involved with multiple wildlife conservation efforts and is also a member of Musicians for Human Rights.

She has also written or co-written four books. Her first, Variations sauvages (Wild Variations), published in 2003, is an autobiography. The cover features a photo of her being greeted by three wolves she has met through her wildlife conservation work.

Yuja Wang (1987–) 

Yuja Wang was born to a musical family in Beijing in 1987. She began studying piano at the age of six and enrolled at the Beijing Conservatory when she was seven.

Yuja Wang, 2021

When she was fifteen, she moved to Philadelphia to study at the storied Curtis Institute of Music. She studied there with legendary pianist Gary Graffman for five years. We wrote an article about their teacher-student relationship.

She made her European debut in 2003, at the age of sixteen. Her North American debut came two years later.

Her breakthrough performance is widely considered to have happened in March 2007, when she replaced Martha Argerich at the Boston Symphony, playing Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto.

Since then, she has been in constant demand at the best orchestras and recital venues in the world.

In 2023, she made headlines for performing all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos and his Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Ever a fashionista, she changed into a different dress for each concerto. She even played an encore!

In 2012, Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Yuja Wang is “quite simply, the most dazzlingly, uncannily gifted pianist in the concert world today, and there’s nothing left to do but sit back, listen and marvel at her artistry.”

The words were prophetic. The rich tradition of women pianists – as well as the broader tradition of pianism generally – is in good hands!