In his 30s, having established himself as one of the foremost pianists of the day, Barenboim developed a parallel career as a conductor, eventually leading cycles of Wagner's Ring at Bayreuth amid appointments from Chicago to Milan.
At Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Fidelio, the ensemble-in-residence, has invited Sandy Duncan to portray seven characters in the life of Amy Marcy Cheney, also known as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, who was one of America's foremost pianists around the turn of the last century and the first woman in the country to be an important composer.
David Holzman, a foremost Wolpe pianist, plays the Sonata, the "Battle Piece" and the "Lied Anrede Hymnus," and others play chamber music.
Clara Wieck was a piano prodigy at a young age, making her public debut at 11, and, acclaimed across Europe, she was perhaps the 19th century's foremost concert pianist.
Acknowledged as one of the foremost concert pianists in the world, she combined flawless technique with a fiery and powerful expressiveness that enabled her to render the classical and Romantic masterworks with entire authority.
The Duke University Museum of Art is chronicling the life of Mary Lou Williams, who was one of the world's foremost jazz pianists and an artist-in-residence at Duke from 1977 until her death in 1981.
In interviews over many years Mr. Rosen often said that he considered himself a pianist first and foremost.
Before the concert began, Jeffrey Kahane, one of the world's foremost conductors and pianists, who marks his 17th season as LACO's music director, introduced the violinists and the Strads they were playing.
"First and foremost he's a tremendous pianist," she says.
Mr. Brookmeyer, a onetime pianist, became the foremost valve trombonist in jazz, recording dozens of albums and becoming a member of several groups that expanded the jazz vocabulary.
First and foremost, Liszt was a colossal pianist, the most awesome virtuoso of his era, who in his playing and his compositions for piano pushed the boundaries of technique, texture and sound.
