Gary Graffman
One of the most influential American pianists, Gary Graffman is not only a world-class musician, but also an acclaimed teacher, having served as the director at the renowned Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia for 20 years and having mentored such piano superstars as Lang Lang. A finger injury in the 70s gradually took away his ability to play with his right hand—today, the 83-year-old is famous for his left-hand-only repertoire. Before The Joy of Music Festival, during which he will give a master class and a performance, the charming and articulate piano master talks to Penny Zhou.
HK Magazine: Were you born into a musical family?
Gary Graffman: My parents were both Russian. My father was a violinist who studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with the famed Leopold Auer in the early years of the 20th century. During the 1917 Revolution he left Russia via Siberia and spent time in both China and Japan on his way to the USA. In Harbin, my father played in and conducted the orchestra, and he also lived and worked for a few years in Shanghai, Tianjin and Yokohama. His first job in the USA was as concertmaster of the Minneapolis Orchestra and then, when Auer came to New York, my father became his assistant. My father soon became a distinguished pedagogue in his own right, teaching up to and including the day he died, in 1976, at the age of 86.
HK: You started learning music at a very young age. Was it your childhood dream to become a pianist?
GG: I started to study the violin when I was three. But I didn’t take to it, and my father decided it would be wiser to have me begin my musical education on what he jokingly called “an easier instrument”: the piano. I did take to that, and never returned to the violin. Although piano study soon became an important part of my life, during my early life I didn’t actually have a dream of becoming a professional pianist. I also was interested in many other subjects, as well as sports: in fact I even broke a finger playing basketball.
HK: Who are your biggest musical influences?
GG: Rubinstein and Schnabel. Although they were all quite different, each one in his own way was a major influence. Among conductors, I certainly learned the most from George Szell.
HK: The classical music scene has been facing challenges in recent years—for example, The Philadelphia Orchestra went bankrupt last year. What do you think are the fundamental reasons for those problems, and what are potential solutions?
GG: Nowadays, the proliferation of classical music far exceeds the demand. Classical has always been somewhat of an acquired taste. When I was growing up in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s, the number of concerts and recitals that took place there was incomparably less than today. And when the New York Philharmonic played at Carnegie Hall—the only large concert auditorium in New York during those years—nobody expected the hall to be full most of the time.
Contrast that with today, when there are two big concert venues in New York—twice as many seats to fill—as well as very many smaller auditoriums. And yet now everyone seems to expect that all the halls should be full all the time. To make matters worse, expenses for presenting concerts have increased tremendously. Concert presenters must learn to accept the fact that audiences for classical music are, always have been and probably always will be, limited to a small minority of the population and therefore presenters must “bite the bullet” and lower their expectations.
One crucial factor, of course, is the question of musical education, of which there is at present very little—in the USA, at least. The only way to enlarge an audience for classical music is, in my opinion, to include good music education in all schools. Although this will not be by any means guarantee that every person who received a good musical education will wish to become a concertgoer, at least everyone will have an opportunity to acquire this taste.
