Artist description Pianist

Music Style Classical

Musical Influences Schnabel, Beethoven, Schubert

Artist History Writing about Walter Hautzig some years ago, The San Francisco Chronicle called him "an absolute master." Similar accolades have followed him throughout his long and distinguished career on four continents. Hautzig was born in Vienna where he began his musical studies, which continued at the Jerusalem Conservatory. He has made his home in the United States since the 1940s when he graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music. His principal teachers included Mieczyslaw Munz, a disciple of Busoni, and Artur Schnabel. Walter Hautzig has appeared in countless recitals in more than fifty countries and has performed with leading orchestras in New York, Baltimore, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona, Brussels, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Mexico City, Bogota, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Wellington and many others throughout the world. In 1979, he was selected by the State Department to be the first artist from the United States to perform in the Peoples Republic of China after normalization of relations. His three recitals in Beijing were broadcast to the entire country and were heard by millions. Hautzig has been praised for his "cultivated tonal beauty" (Die Welt, Berlin); "radiant sound" (Philadelphia Inquirer); "unforgettable Emperor Concerto" (El Tiempo, Bogota); "performance which impressed for its sheer virile integrity" (Auckland Star); "distinguished pianism" (Baltimore Sun); and for his"musicianship, taste and technical mastery" (Jerusalem Post); and "natural spontanaiety" (Japan Times). HiFi News of London summed up Walter Hautzig's artistry with these words: "He is a pianist who constantly demands and gets your attention because he is always being creative.

Instruments Piano

Albums For AMERICUS Records: Music by Chopin, Schubert, etc.

Press Reviews FROM THE AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, JULY 1999: By JOHN BELL YOUNG: (re: HAUTZIG PLAYS CHOPIN; Americus CD 19991009): Walter Hautzig, whose Chopin playing is likely to infuriate purists as much as it does devotees of the so-called Golden Age, reminds me, in several significant ways, of Wilhelm Backhaus. Like that great pianist, his interests, particularly in this repertoire, are entirely compositional and never superficial. His tone is big-boned, and his principal interest rests with harmonic tension, motivic characterization, and musical structure. He plans every phrase with the meticulous care of a regisseur in the final stages of rehearsal. Though more attentive to intonational issues than most, he makes no attempt to mimic the bel canto colors or effervescent delicacy of a Tiegerman or Friedman, nor even the sweeping lyricism of a Cortot. What on first hearing may strike a listener about his playing as monolithic is in fact an expression of an almost Brahmin patience and generosity that eschews surfaces in favor of what lies underneath...He clearly has no interest in virtuosity for its own sake. He is a firm believer in throwing his being into the musical fiber; nothing, not even passagework, is ever taken for granted. Scales, octaves, and roulades are never glib but occasions for the exploration of dynamic tension. While the piano itself and the exploitation of its myriad colors may be implicit to Chopin interpretation, Mr Hautzig prefers to approach things from the inside. He betrays nothing of a rhapsodic Slavic sensibility or the slick and streamlined polish of the Paris Conservatoire. Indeed, like Backhaus, Mr. Hautzig is an iconoclast of sorts in Chopin. Mr Hautzig's Chopin is certainly not like anyone else's, and in light of the intelligence and maturity of his ideas, is best viewed from a rather different perspective than say, Cortot's or Friedman's or, closer to our own day, Pollini's. It is neither suave nor elegant in any conventional or superficial sense. Nor is it extravagant. ..What some may find disconcerting or un-Chopinesque about his playing, I find enlightening and often imaginative. This is true even when, as a matter of taste and sensibility, I find myself at odds with his presentation of his fascinating and always legitimate ideas. Lest anyone get the wrong idea, Mr. Hautzig knows perfectly well how to make the most of pianistic colors, though they are invariably governed by formal considerations...The waltzes are deftly penetrated, and Mr Hautzig's way of segregating the counterpoint is skillful and expressive. What he does is to elaborate their intervallic relations and compositional conflicts. But he plays with great charm as well; it is idiomatic and loveingly inflected. He leads the waltzes by the arm, so to speak, as if each were a bejeweled countess, fan in hand, ready to dance the night away....Mr Hautzig's playing is extremely rich and intense...Spontanaiety can be a code word for lack of preparation, and I applaud his rejection of it as something superficial and frivolous...I'd much rather hear Mr. Hautzig in Chopin than have to suffer one more minute of the tiresome, under-articulated and Iowa cornfield Chopin that made household names of some of his more celebrated colleagues, past and present. Mr. Hautzig ...is now in the autumn of his long and distinguished career. This recording is the culmination of a life's work. But be warned: it requires more than one listening. If it raises any controversy, it will do so on issues of substance versus style. For Walter Hautzig, substance IS style.

Location New York, New York - USA

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