Julian Alexander Bream, CBE, is an English virtuoso classical guitarist and lutenist. One of the most distinguished classical guitarists of the 20th century, he played a significant role in improving the public perception of the classical guitar as a respectable instrument.
Harold Victor Bauer was a noted pianist of Jewish heritage who began his musical career as a violinist.
Shura Cherkassky was an American classical pianist known for his performances of the romantic repertoire. His playing was characterized by a virtuoso technique and singing piano tone. For much of his later life, Cherkassky resided in London.
Ruth Laredo was an American classical pianist.
Millette Alexander is an American actress and concert pianist, best known for having played Dr. Sara McIntyre Gantry Werner Blackford Thorpe on The Guiding Light from January 1969 to January 1983. She was the third and best-known actress to have portrayed the popular role. She also is known for her three roles on television's The Edge of Night and for having played Sylvia Hill Suker, R. N. on As the World Turns.
Karl Ulrich Schnabel was an Austrian pianist. Schnabel was the son of pianist Artur Schnabel and operatic contralto and lieder singer Therese Behr and elder brother of the American actor Stefan Schnabel. An internationally celebrated teacher of the piano, his students include, among others, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, Richard Goode, Kwong-Kwong Ma, Stanislav Ioudenitch, Jon Nakamatsu, Murray Perahia, and Peter Serkin.
Ivan Moravec was a Czech concert pianist whose performing and recording career spanned nearly half a century. He is considered one of the greatest interpreters of Chopin.
Morton Estrin was an American classical pianist. His career began in 1949 with a well-received recital at Town Hall. He studied with the teacher Vera Maurina-Press and others.
Yaltah Menuhin was an American-born British pianist, artist and poet.
Marie Novello, also known as Marie Novello Williams, born Maria Williams was a Welsh pianist. She was one of Theodor Leschetizky's last students and performed in public from childhood. Her early death cut short a promising career just as she began to record for one of the major English labels, having already amassed a considerable discography for one of its second-rank competitors.
Jeroen van Veen is a Dutch classical pianist and composer.
Wanda Wiłkomirska was a Polish violinist and academic teacher. She was known for both the classical repertoire and for her interpretation of 20th-century music, having received two Polish State Awards for promoting Polish music to the world as well as other awards for her contribution to music. She gave world premiere performances of numerous contemporary works, including music by Tadeusz Baird and Krzysztof Penderecki. Wiłkomirska performed on a violin crafted by Pietro Guarneri in 1734 in Venice. She taught at the music academies of Mannheim and Sydney.
Richard and John Contiguglia are American identical twin duo-pianists. Born to Italian immigrant parents, they were the second set of twins and the youngest of seven children.
Orion Weiss is an American classical pianist.
Alessio Bax is an Italian classical pianist. Bax was born in 1977 in Bari, Italy, and graduated from the Bari conservatory at the age of 14. He won the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan at age 19 and the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition in 2000 after first participating in 1993. Bax was a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's CMS Two for three seasons, beginning in 2009. He also received the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2009. He studied at Southern Methodist University near Dallas, Texas, where he is currently a faculty member of the university's Meadows School of the Arts. Bax is a Steinway Artist.
Connoisseur Society is an American audiophile classical music and jazz record label. It was founded by E. Alan Silver and James Goodfriend. Silver and Goodfriend helped artists from the Eastern bloc to perform in the US during the Cold War, among them Ivan Moravec in 1962.
Carles & Sofia Piano Duo is the name of the duo of pianists consisting of Carles (Carlos) Lama, born 26 February 1970 in Girona, Catalonia, Spain, and Sofia Cabruja, born 11 May 1965 also in Girona.
Babette Hierholzer is a German American pianist.
Ethel Bartlett (1896–1978) and Rae Robertson (1893–1956), popularly known as Bartlett and Robertson, were a husband-and-wife classical piano duo who were credited with popularising two-piano music in Europe and the United States in the 1930s and 1940s through their extensive touring, recordings, and radio performances. Of English and Scottish background respectively, Bartlett and Robertson met during their studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London and married in 1921. Although they initially pursued solo careers, they teamed up as duo-pianists in the late 1920s and conducted annual international tours for over two decades. Several major composers of their era wrote duo-piano compositions especially for them, including Sir Arnold Bax, Benjamin Britten, Lennox Berkeley, and the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů.
The Lark Quartet is a New York-based, all female string quartet founded in 1985. It is acknowledged for its distinguished contribution to the string quartet repertoire, commissioning new works from some of America's most celebrated composers. Most notably, Aaron Jay Kernis' two string quartets: Quartet no. 1 Musica celestis and Quartet no. 2 Musica instrumentalis, which received the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. The Lark Quartet served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 2004–08 and has recorded numerous albums on multiple labels including Decca/Argo, Arabesque, Bridge, ERI, Endeavor and Koch.
