Alexis Weissenberg

After receiving his first lessons from his mother, Alexis Weissenberg (1929–2012) started piano and composition studies at the age of five with the leading Bulgarian composer, Pancho Vladigerov. In 1945, Weissenberg emigrated to Palestine, where he studied under Leo Kestenberg and performed Beethoven with the Israel Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. In 1946, he went to the Juilliard School to study with Olga Samaroff, and studied also with Artur Schnabel and Wanda Landowska. In 1947, he won both the Leventritt Competition and the Philadelphia Youth Competition. With these awards, his career flourished and that same year, he made his US debut performing Chopin’s Piano Concerto no.1 with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under George Szell and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no.3 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugène Ormandy. Between 1957 and 1965, he took an extended sabbatical for the purpose of studying and teaching. Weissenberg resumed his career in 1966 with a recital in Paris. Later that year he played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in Berlin conducted by Herbert von Karajan, who praised him as "one of the best pianists of our time". Alexis Weissenberg started composing when he was a child. His first composition was a little piece for solo piano that he wrote when he was nine years old, and the last one, a jazz-flavoured piano sonata, was written in 1982. He has left behind numerous compositions, including pieces for piano solo and two pianos, transcriptions, song arrangements, cadenzas and four musicals. Weissenberg died in 2012 at the age of 82 in Lugano, Switzerland.