Sources
- The Fiorentino recordings issued under the name of Procopolis are identified at Ernst Lumpe's website.
- Robin O'Connor, the man who assembled many of the Paul Procopolis LPs, recounts how they came into being on the MusicWeb website.
Paul Procopolis is the name given to a non-existent classical pianist who was credited as a performer on various recordings.
With the advent of cheap long-playing records, unscrupulous companies issued records of material under pseudonyms to avoid paying royalties or because they did not own the copyright to the recordings. In the case of Paul Procopolis, the reasons for the recording company, Saga Records issuing recordings pseudonymously are uncertain, as they would have had the copyright to at least some of the material. According to Robin O'Connor (see Sources), the company's intention was to compile pre-existing recordings by several different performers on one album and present them as the work of a single performer.
The name Paul Procopolis was used to reissue recordings by the pianist Sergio Fiorentino, including the complete Chopin waltzes, extracts from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, and works by Liszt. Some of the LPs included a biography of Procopolis who, it was alleged, was born in Athens in 1934, studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and lived and taught in Greece. The biography was written by Robin O'Connor. Various other LPs give no biographical information at all.
Ernst Lumpe has attempted to identify the real artists in the Procopolis recordings. Other pianists whose recordings were issued under this name included Bernard Vitebsky (his Beethoven Concerto No. 3), Albert Ferber (an LP of "The World's Best Loved Piano Music") and Clive Lythgoe. The recording of the Second Chopin Concerto has been identified as that of the Brazilian pianist Carmen Vitis Adnet (who lived in Vienna and was married to pianist Hans Graf) with the Vienna Symphony under Hans Swarowsky. Further recordings (such as the First Chopin Concerto) remain unidentified.[ citation needed ]
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 KBE is an Austrian pianist, poet, author, and lecturer who is known particularly for his performances of Mozart, Schubert, Schoenberg, and Beethoven.
Maurizio Pollini is an Italian pianist. He is known for performances of compositions by Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy, among others. He has also championed and performed works by contemporary composers such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, Roberto Carnevale, Gianluca Cascioli and Bruno Maderna. Works composed for him include Luigi Nono's ..... sofferte onde serene ..., Giacomo Manzoni's Masse: omaggio a Edgard Varèse and Salvatore Sciarrino's Fifth Sonata.
Constantin "Dinu" Lipatti was a Romanian classical pianist and composer whose career was cut short by his death from causes related to Hodgkin's disease at age 33. He was elected posthumously to the Romanian Academy.
Wilhelm Walter Friedrich Kempff was a German pianist 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.
Li Yundi ; born 7 October 1982) is a Chinese concert pianist popularly known as Yundi and formerly Yundi Li. Born in Chongqing, Li is most well known for being the youngest pianist, at the age of 18, to win the International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition, in 2000, and for judging it in 2015.
Ernst von Dohnányi was a Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor. He used a German form of his name on most of his published compositions.
Shura Cherkassky was a Ukrainian-American concert 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.
Bronisław Huberman was a Jewish Polish violinist. He was known for his individualistic and personal interpretations and was praised for his tone color, expressiveness, and flexibility. The Gibson ex-Huberman Stradivarius violin which bears his name was stolen twice and recovered once during the period in which he owned the instrument. Huberman is also remembered for founding the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and thus providing refuge from the Third Reich for nearly 1,000 European Jews.
Leonard Pennario was an American classical pianist and composer.
Joyce Hilda Hatto was an English concert pianist and piano teacher. In 1956 she married William Barrington-Coupe, a record producer who was convicted of Purchase Tax evasion in 1966. Hatto became famous very late in life when unauthorised copies of commercial recordings made by other pianists were released under her name, earning her high praise from critics. The fraud did not come to light until 2007, more than six months after her death.
Lubka Oleksandrivna Kolessa was a classical pianist and professor of piano.
Sergio Fiorentino was a 20th-century Italian classical pianist whose sporadic performing career spanned five decades. There is quite a bit of footage his playing that survives, in addition to audio recordings. Recently, a complete concert recorded on video in 1994 has surfaced.
Concert Artist/Fidelio Recordings was a British classical music record label, situated in Royston, Hertfordshire, England, and owned and operated by William Barrington-Coupe. It is best known for selling unauthorized copies of commercial recordings by other artists as the work of pianists Sergio Fiorentino and Barrington-Coupe's wife, Joyce Hatto. Barrington-Coupe's long history in the music world includes time with Saga Films and Records and pop record producer Joe Meek. The company issued recordings from 1955 until 2007.
Friedrich Wührer was an Austrian-German pianist and piano pedagogue. He was a close associate and advocate of composer Franz Schmidt, whose music he edited and, in the case of the works for left hand alone, revised for performance with two hands; he was also a champion of the Second Viennese School and other composers of the early 20th century. His recorded legacy, however, centers on German romantic literature, particularly the music of Franz Schubert.
Albert Ferber was a Swiss pianist who had an international performing career that spanned four decades and took him across the world.
Joseph Banowetz is an American-born pianist, pedagogue, author, and editor, currently teaching at the University of North Texas. Banowetz is an expert on the music of the Russian Romantic Composer, Anton Rubinstein.
Alexander Raab was a Hungarian-American pianist and distinguished piano teacher.
The Russian-American classical virtuoso pianist Vladimir Horowitz was a recording artist for over 60 years; beginning in 1926 on a piano roll system for Welte-Mignon, then with audio recordings, starting in 1928 for the Victor Talking Machine Company, later RCA Victor. Horowitz continued to record for a variety of record labels throughout his life. Between 1962 and 1973 he recorded for Columbia Masterworks In 1975, Horowitz returned to RCA, with which he recorded a series of live recitals. For the last years of his life, between 1985 and 1989, Horowitz recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Horowitz's final recording, with Sony Classical, was completed in November 1989, four days before his death. This final recording consisted of repertoire that he had never previously recorded. His discography contains numerous albums and compilations of works by a variety of composers. Horowitz has also appeared in several video items, most of these were produced in the later years of his life.
Sergei Vasilievich RachmaninoffRussian pronunciation: [sʲɪrˈɡʲej rɐxˈmanʲɪnəf]; 1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1873 – 28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music.
