Seymour Bernstein | |
|---|---|
 Seymour Bernstein in 2015 | |
| Born | April 24, 1927 Newark, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Pianist, professor at New York University |
| Years active | 1942—present |
| Website | seymourbernstein |
Seymour Bernstein (born April 24, 1927) is an American pianist, composer, and teacher. [1] He is the subject of the documentary Seymour: An Introduction directed by the actor Ethan Hawke. [2]
Bernstein was born in Newark, New Jersey and grew up there; he graduated from Weequahic High School in Newark in 1945. [3] [4] He began teaching piano at the age of fifteen, when his teacher at the time, Clara Husserl, a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky, arranged for him to supervise the practicing of some of her gifted younger pupils. He soon had a class of pupils of his own. He achieved local fame as a performer, winning the Griffith Artist Award at the age of seventeen. During the Korean War, he gave concerts on the front lines and for military leaders. His concert career took him to Europe, Asia, and to many places in the Americas. He wrote With Your Own Two Hands and 20 Lessons in Keyboard Choreography, which has been published in German, Japanese, Korean, and Russian.
Bernstein studied with Alexander Brailowsky, Clifford Curzon, Jan Gorbaty, Nadia Boulanger, and George Enescu. In 1969 he made his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, [5] playing the world premiere of Heitor Villa-Lobos's Concerto No. 2. He is the winner of the First Prize and Prix Jacques Durand at Fontainebleau, the National Federation of Music Clubs Award for Furthering American Music Abroad, a Beebe Foundation grant, two Martha Baird Rockefeller grants, and four State Department grants. He made a point of offering master classes and lecture recitals where his concert tours took him. When grant money allowed, he filled his suitcases with scores to distribute to teachers and students. He ceased performing in 1977 in order to concentrate on teaching, composing, and working in other creative outlets; he did not tell anyone that his farewell recital would be his last.
Bernstein has composed music ranging from teaching material for students of all levels to sophisticated concert pieces. He performs as a guest artist with chamber ensembles and serves on the juries of international competitions. He maintains a private studio in New York City and is also an adjunct associate professor of music and music education at New York University. [6] On December 18, 2004, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia northwest of Washington, D.C. In 2015, actor and filmmaker Ethan Hawke made a documentary about Bernstein entitled: "Seymour: An Introduction". [7] In 2020, Seymour recorded a series of pedagogical lessons for tonebase piano covering works by Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Schumann, and technical exercises like arpeggios. [8]
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation".
Constantin "Dinu" Lipatti was a Romanian classical pianist and composer whose career was cut short by his death from effects related to Hodgkin's disease at age 33. He was elected posthumously to the Romanian Academy. He composed few works, all of which demonstrated a strong influence from Hungarian composer Béla Bartok.
Josef Casimir Hofmann was a Polish-American pianist, composer, music teacher, and inventor.
Karl Tausig was a Polish virtuoso pianist, arranger and composer. He is generally regarded as Franz Liszt's most distinguished pupil and one of the greatest pianists of all time.
Theodor Leschetizky was an Austrian–Polish pianist, professor, and composer. He was born in Landshut in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then a crown land of Austria-Hungary.
Shura Cherkassky was a Russian-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.
Friedrich Wilhelm Michael Kalkbrenner, also known as Frédéric Kalkbrenner, was a pianist, composer, piano teacher and piano manufacturer. German by birth, Kalkbrenner studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, starting at a young age and eventually settled in Paris, where he lived until his death in 1849. Kalkbrenner composed more than 200 piano works, as well as many piano concertos and operas.
Heinrich Gustav Neuhaus was a Russian pianist and teacher. Part of a musical dynasty, he grew up in a Polish-speaking household. He taught at the Moscow Conservatory from 1922 to 1964. People's Artist of the RSFSR (1956).
Abby Whiteside was an American piano teacher. She challenged the finger-centric approach of much classical piano teaching and instead advocated a holistic attitude in which the arm and torso are the conductors of a musical image conceived first in the mind.
Alexander Brailowsky was a Russian and French pianist who specialised in the works of Frédéric Chopin. He was a leading concert pianist in the years between the two World Wars.
Alexander Uninsky was an American classical pianist of Ukrainian-Jewish origin.
Weequahic High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades, located in the Weequahic section of Newark in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The school is operated by the Newark Public Schools and is located at 279 Chancellor Avenue. The school has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1935. The school was listed on the New Jersey Register and the National Register of Historic Places in 2024.
Isidor Edmond Philipp was a French pianist, composer, and pedagogue of Jewish Hungarian descent. He was born in Budapest and died in Paris.
Benjamin Grosvenor is a British classical pianist.
David Saperton was an American pianist known for being the first pianist to play the entire original compositions as well as the complete transcriptions of his father-in-law, Leopold Godowsky. He also recorded a number of Godowsky's Studies on Chopin's Études as well as other pieces. His students at the Curtis Institute of Music and later include Jacques Abram, Jeanne Behrend, Jorge Bolet, Shura Cherkassky, Sidney Foster, Julius Katchen, Seymour Lipkin, William Masselos, John Simms, Abbey Simon, Eleanor Sokoloff, Dorothy Wanderman, Alan Weiss, and Frances Ziffer. As a pianist he is regarded as a great dramatist, a sensitive poet, and superb colorist.
Yuko Kawai is a Japanese classical pianist. She gave the world premiere of Chopin Piano Concertos in E minor Op. 11 and F minor Op. 21 in the version for one piano as published in the National Edition.
Seymour: An Introduction is a 2014 American documentary film. Directed by Ethan Hawke, the film documents the career of Seymour Bernstein, a classical pianist who abandoned his rising career as a concert pianist at age 50 to retreat to a more modest, private life as a music educator and composer. The film premiered at the 2014 Telluride Film Festival, and was released on March 13, 2015, by IFC Films. As of May 2023, it has a 100% rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.
Joseph Robert Smith was an American pianist, author, and lecturer. The son of Robert Paul Smith and Elinor Goulding Smith, Smith was a long-time student of pianist Seymour Bernstein.
Ethel Newcomb (1875–1959) was an American pianist. A pupil of Theodor Leschetizky, she became a successful soloist and ensemble performer across Europe and the United States during the early 1900s. Respected for her interpretations of the work of Beethoven, she was reportedly sought out as a mentor herself by students from across the globe after she opened her own music studio in New York prior to World War I.
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