Geoffrey Saba (born 1946) is an Australian classical pianist of Lebanese descent, based in London.
Saba was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, [1] where his parents established a well-known haberdashery store. He attended Toowoomba Grammar School. He was awarded the University of Queensland Music Scholarship for 1963, and chose to take it at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. [2]
After graduating, he moved to London in the late 1960s, and has resided there ever since. He has worked with Stefan Askenase and Vlado Perlemuter.
He was one of the competitors awarded a bronze medal at the First Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in 1974. [3]
He tours in North America, Europe, the Middle East, India, Japan, South East Asia and Australia.
In its facsimile edition of Franz Schubert's C major Sonata, Relique, D.840, the International Franz Schubert Institute, Vienna, published Saba's essay on a performer's approach to playing Schubert's unfinished piano sonatas. [4]
Artur Schnabel was an Austrian-American classical pianist, composer and pedagogue. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura. Among the 20th century's most respected and important pianists, his playing displayed marked vitality, profundity and spirituality in the Austro-German classics, particularly the works of Beethoven and Schubert.
Alfred Brendel is a Czech-born Austrian classical pianist, poet, author, composer, and lecturer who is noted for his performances of Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven.
Claudio Arrau León was a Chilean and American pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century.
Wilhelm Walter Friedrich Kempff was a German pianist, teacher and composer. Although his repertoire included Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms, Kempff was particularly well known for his interpretations of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert, recording the complete sonatas of both composers. He is considered to have been one of the chief exponents of the Germanic tradition during the 20th century and one of the greatest pianists of all time.
Bart Berman is a Dutch-Israeli pianist and composer, best known as an interpreter of Franz Schubert and 20th-century music.
Murray David Perahia is an American pianist and conductor. He has been considered one of the greatest living pianists. He was the first North American pianist to win the Leeds International Piano Competition, in 1972. Known as a leading interpreter of Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, among other composers, Perahia has won numerous awards, including three Grammy Awards from a total of 18 nominations, and 9 Gramophone Awards in addition to its first and only "Piano Award".
Richard Goode is an American classical pianist who is especially known for his interpretations of Mozart and Beethoven.
Franz Schubert wrote his Sonata in C major for piano four-hands, D 812, in June 1824 during his second stay at the Esterházy estate in Želiezovce. The extended work, in four movements, has a performance time of around 40 to 45 minutes. It was published as Grand Duo, Op. 140, in 1837, nine years after the composer's death.
Radu Lupu was a Romanian pianist. He was widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists of his time.
Llŷr Williams is a Welsh concert pianist.
Abdallah Hani El Masri عبدالله هاني المصري is a Lebanese-Russian composer, now resident in Kuwait, of mostly orchestral and chamber works that have been performed in Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
Lars Vogt was a German classical pianist, conductor and academic teacher. Noted by The New York Times for his interpretations of Brahms, Vogt performed as a soloist with major orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic. He was the music director of the Orchestre de chambre de Paris at the time of his death and also served as the music director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia. He ran a festival of chamber music, Spannungen, from 1998, and succeeded his teacher Karl-Heinz Kämmerling as professor of piano at the Musikhochschule Hannover.
Paul Lewis is an English classical pianist.
Dezső Ránki is a Hungarian virtuoso concert pianist with a broad repertoire and a significant discography of solo, duo and concerto works.
Geoffrey Penwill Parsons AO OBE was an Australian pianist, most particularly notable as an accompanist to singers and instrumentalists. After the retirement of Gerald Moore, he was generally considered the world's finest and most sympathetic accompanist of lieder singers, "elevating the role of the accompanist to new heights with his musicality, authority and quiet strength of playing".
Antti Aleksi Siirala is a Finnish pianist.
Aloys and AlfonsKontarsky were German duo-pianist brothers who were associated with a number of important world premieres of contemporary works. They had an international reputation for performing modern music for two pianists, although they also performed the standard repertoire and they sometimes played separately. They were occasionally joined by their younger brother Bernhard in performances of pieces for three pianos. After suffering a stroke in 1983, Aloys retired from performing.
Eugen Cicero, nicknamed "Mister Golden Hands", was a Romanian-German jazz pianist who performed in the mixed classical-swing style.
Barbara Nissman is an American pianist. She is especially known for her interpretations and performances of the works of Alberto Ginastera and Sergei Prokofiev which feature prominently in her repertoire. She is also a writer and a producer of a new DVD series, and a guest clinician presenting concerts, master classes and lectures world-wide.
Jayson Lloyd Gillham is an Australian-British classical pianist, based in London. In 2014, Gillham was the winner of the 2014 Montreal International Musical Competition. His performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 was described in the Huffington Post as being played 'with such streamlined patrician elegance that he took home First Prize and a string of engagements...' The British conductor Sir Mark Elder said Gillham 'plays Beethoven with a sort of 'glow''. In May 2015, Gillham signed a three-album deal with ABC Classics.