Earl Wild is a pianist in the grand Romantic tradition. Considered by many to be the last of the great Romantic pianists, this eminent musician is known internationally as one of the last in a long line of great virtuoso pianist / composers. Often heralded as a super virtuoso and one of the Twentieth Century’s greatest pianists, Earl Wild is a legendary figure who has performed throughout the world for over eight decades.Major recognition is something Mr. Wild has received numerous times in his long career. He was included in the Philips Records series entitled The Great Pianists of the 20th Century with a double disc devoted exclusively to piano transcriptions. He has been featured in TIME Magazine on two separate occasions, most recently in December of 2000 honoring his eighty-fifth birthday.
Earl Wild was born on November 26, 1915 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a child his parents would often play opera overtures (such as the one from Bellini’s Norma) on their Edison phonograph. At three, he would go to the family piano, reach up to the keyboard, find the exact notes, and play along in the same key. At this early age, he displayed the rare gift of absolute pitch. This and other feats labeled him a child prodigy and led immediately to piano lessons. At six, he had a fluent technique and could read music easily. Before his twelfth birthday, he was accepted as a pupil of the famous teacher Selmar Janson, who had studied with d’Albert and Scharwenka, both students of the great virtuoso pianist / composer Franz Liszt. He was placed into a program for artistically gifted young people at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Tech - now Carnegie Mellon University, where he graduated in 1937. By nineteen, he was a concert hall veteran.
As a teenager, Mr. Wild had already composed many original compositions and piano transcriptions as well as arrangements for chamber orchestra that were regularly performed on the local radio station. He was invited at the age of twelve to perform on radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh (the first radio station in the United States). Mr. Wild made such an impression that he was asked to work for the station on a regular basis for the next eight years. Mr. Wild was only fourteen when he was hired to play the Piano and Celeste in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under the batons of many different conductors; Otto Klemperer and Fritz Reiner being two of the more well-known personalities.
Mr. Wild’s also studied with Egon Petri, a student of Ferruccio Busoni; the French pianist Paul Doguereau, a pupil of Paderewski and Long; Helene Barere, the wife of the famous Russian virtuoso pianist, Simon Barere, and with Volya Cossack, a pupil of Isidore Philippe, who had studied with Saint-Saëns.
At fifteen, Earl Wild gave a brilliant and critically well received performance of Liszt’s First Piano Concerto with Dimitri Mitropoulos and the Minneapolis Symphony in Pittsburgh’s Syria Mosque Hall. He performed without the benefit of a rehearsal. In 1937, he joined the NBC network in New York City as a staff pianist. This position included not only the duties of playing solo piano and chamber recitals, but also performing in the NBC Symphony Orchestra under conductor Arturo Toscanini. In 1939, when NBC began transmitting commercial live musical telecasts, Mr. Wild became the first artist to perform a piano recital on U.S. television. In 1942, Toscanini personally invited Earl Wild to be the soloist in an NBC radio broadcast of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. It was the first performance of the Rhapsody for both conductor and pianist, and although Mr. Wild had not yet played any of Gershwin’s other compositions, he was immediately hailed as the major interpreter of Gershwin’s music.
The youngest (and only) American piano soloist ever to perform with the NBC Symphony and Maestro Toscanini, Mr. Wild was a member of the orchestra and worked for the NBC radio and television network from 1937 to 1945. During World War II, Mr. Wild served for two years in the United States Navy as a musician, playing 4th flute in the Navy Band. He also performed numerous solo piano recitals at the White House for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and played twenty-one different piano concertos with the U.S. Navy Symphony Orchestra in different venues in Washington, D.C. During those two years in the Navy he was frequently requested to accompany First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to her many speaking engagements, where he performed the National Anthem as a prelude to her speeches. Shortly after leaving the Navy in 1944, Mr. Wild moved to the newly formed American Broadcasting Company (ABC), where his duties consisted of being staff pianist, conductor, and composer where he conducted and performed many of his own compositions - he stayed at ABC until 1968.During both his NBC and ABC affiliations he was also a traveling musician, performing and conducting many concert engagements around the world. In 1962, the ABC network commissioned him to compose an Easter Oratorio - the first time a television network subsidized a major musical work. Earl Wild was assisted by tenor William Lewis, who wrote the libretto and sang the role of St. John in the production. Mr. Wild’s composition, Revelations - a religious work based on the apocalyptic visions of St. John the Divine. Mr. Wild also conducted its world premiere telecast in 1962, which blended dance, music, song, and theatrical staging. The large-scale oratorio was sung by four soloists and chorus and was written in three sections: Seal of Wisdom, The Seventh Angel, and The New Day. The first telecast was so successful that it was entirely restaged and rebroadcast on TV again in 1964. Another composition by Mr. Wild, a choral work based on an American Indian folk legend titled The Turquoise Horse, was commissioned by the Palm Springs Desert Museum for the official opening and dedication ceremonies of their Annenberg Theater on January 11, 1976. On September 26, 1992, the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra with Joseph Giunta Conducting gave the world premiere of Earl Wild’s composition Variations on a Theme of Stephen Foster for Piano and Orchestra (‘Doo-Dah’ Variations) with Mr. Wild as the soloist. Mr. Wild recorded the composition a year later with the same orchestra and conductor. Pianist / composer Earl Wild wrote this set of variations using Stephen Foster’s American Song, Camptown Races as the theme. The melody is the same length as the famous Paganini Caprice theme that Rachmaninoff used in his Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini and that Brahms used in his set of Variations for piano solo. Mr. Wild thus became the first virtuoso pianist / composer to perform his own piano concerto since Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Earl Wild has participated in many premieres. In 1944 on NBC radio, he performed the Western World premiere of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio in E minor. In France, in 1949, he was soloist in the world premiere performance of Paul Creston’s Piano Concerto. He gave the American premiere of the same work with the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. the next year. In December of 1970, with Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony, Mr. Wild gave the world premiere of Marvin David Levy’s Piano Concerto, a work specially written for him. Mr.
Wild has appeared with nearly every orchestra and performed countless recitals in virtually every country. In the past ninety years he has collaborated with many eminent conductors including; Toscanini, Stokowski, Reiner, Klemperer, Horenstein, Leinsdorf, Fiedler, Mitropoulos, Grofe, Ormandy, Sargent, Dorati, Maazel, Solti, Copland, and Schippers. Additionally, Earl Wild performed countless times with violinists: Mischa Elman, Oscar Shumsky, Ruggerio Ricci, Mischa Mischakoff, and Joseph Gingold; violists: William Primrose and Emanuel Vardi; cellists: Leonard Rose, Harvey Shapiro, and Frank Miller: and singers: Maria Callas, Jenny Tourel, Lily Pons, Marguerite Matzenauer, Dorothy Maynor, Lauritz Melchior, Robert Merrill, Mario Lanza, Jan Peerce, Zinka Milanov, Grace Bumbry, and Evelyne Lear. Highlights of collaborative performances include a March 1974 joint recital with Maria Callas as a benefit for the Dallas Opera Company and a duo recital with famed mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel in New York City in 1975. Mr. Wild has had the unequaled honor of being requested to perform for six consecutive Presidents of the United States, beginning with President Herbert Hoover in 1931. In 1961 he was soloist with the National Symphony at the inauguration ceremonies of President John F. Kennedy in Constitution Hall – a legendary performance that has been historically preserved and made available through the National Symphony Orchestra on their 75th Anniversary box set.In addition to pursuing his own concert and composing career, Earl Wild has actively supported young musicians all his life. Over the years he has taught at Eastman, Penn State, Manhattan School, Ohio State, Carnegie Mellon and The Juilliard Schools of Music. Carnegie Mellon has honored Mr. Wild with their Alumni Merit Award (1996), their Distinguished Achievement Award (2000) and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts (2007).
In 1960, at the Santa Fe Opera, Earl Wild conducted Verdi’s La Traviata, as well as Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, on a double bill with Igor Stravinsky (who conducted his own opera Oedipus Rex). From 1954 to 1957 Mr. Wild worked with comedian Sid Caesar on the very popular TV program The Caesar Hour. During those years, he composed and performed all the solo piano backgrounds in the silent movie skits. He also composed most of the musical parodies and burlesques on operas that were so innovative for their time and have become true gems of early live television.
Liszt is a composer who has been closely associated with Mr. Wild throughout his long career - he has been performing Liszt recitals for well over sixty years. In New York City in 1961, he gave a monumental solo Liszt recital celebrating the 150th anniversary of Liszt’s birth. More recently in 1986, honoring the 100th anniversary of Liszt’s death, he gave a series of three different recitals titled Liszt the Poet, Liszt the Transcriber, and Liszt the Virtuoso in New York’s Carnegie Hall and many other recital halls throughout the world. Championing composers such as Liszt, Medtner, Paderewski, Scharwenka, Tausig, Balakirev, d’Albert, Moszkowski, Hahn and countless others long before they were "fashionable" is part of the foundation on which Mr. Wild has built his long and successful career. In 1986, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the death of the great Franz Liszt, Earl Wild was awarded a Liszt Medal by the People’s Republic of Hungary at a ceremony at the Embassy in Washington D.C. in recognition of his long and devoted association with this legendary composer’s music. Also in 1986 Mr. Wild was asked to participate in a television documentary titled Wild about Liszt, which was filmed at Wynyard, the ninth Marques of Londonderry’s family estate in Northern England. The program won the British Petroleum Award for best musical documentary that year.It was in 1976 when Mr. Wild wrote his now famous piano transcription based on George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess and also revised his six original 1950’s Virtuoso Etudes based on popular songs I Got Rhythm, Somebody Loves Me, Liza, Embraceable You, Fascinatin’ Rhythm, The Man I Love, and Oh, Lady be Good. Mr. Wild’s Etude No.3 The Man I Love was originally written for left hand alone but was revised for two hands in 1976 along with an addition of a seventh Etude Fascinatin’ Rhythm. In 1989 he also composed an improvisation for solo piano based on Gershwin’s Someone To Watch Over Me written in the form of a Theme and Three Variations. In 1981 Mr. Wild composed thirteen piano transcriptions from a selected group of Rachmaninoff songs: Floods of Spring, Midsummer Nights, The Little Island, Where Beauty Dwells, In the Silent Night, Vocalise, On the Death of a Linnet, The Muse, O, Cease Thy Singing, To the Children, Dreams, Sorrow in Springtime, and Do not Grieve.
A common element among the great pianists of the past and Earl Wild is the art of composing piano transcriptions. Mr. Wild has taken his place in history as a direct descendant of the golden age of the art of writing piano transcriptions. Often called "The finest transcriber of our time," Earl Wild’s numerous piano transcriptions are widely known and respected. Mr. Wild is one of today’s most recorded pianists, having made his first disc in 1939 for RCA. His discography of recorded works includes more than 35 piano concertos, 26 chamber works, and over 700 solo piano pieces. Mr. Wild has recorded numerous CDs per year since 1964, with over twenty different record labels including: CBS, RCA / BMG, Vanguard, EMI, Nonesuch, Readers Digest, Stradavari, Heliodor, Varsity, dell’Arte, Quintessence, Whitehall, Etcetera, Chesky, Elan, Sony Classical, Philips, and Ivory Classics. In 1997, he received a Grammy Award for his disc devoted entirely to virtuoso piano transcriptions titled Earl Wild - The Romantic Master (an 80th Birthday Tribute). The thirteen piano transcriptions on this disc comprise a wide range of composers from Handel, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, J. Strauss Jr., Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Kreisler, Fauré, and Saint-Saëns. Of these thirteen transcriptions, nine were written by Mr. Wild - eight are world premiere recordings. This disc is now available in its original HDCD encoded sound on Ivory Classics (CD – 70907). For the first official release of the newly formed Ivory Classics label in 1997, Earl Wild recorded the complete Chopin Nocturnes (CD-70701), which the eminent New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg reviewed in the American Record Guide saying, "These are the best version of the Nocturnes ever recorded." Since its inception, Ivory Classics has released over thirty newly recorded or re-released performances featuring Earl Wild. In May of 2003 the eighty-eight year-old Dean of the Piano recorded a new CD of solo material he had never recorded before. Using the newly manufactured, limited edition Shigeru Kawai Concert Grand EX piano, the disc includes Mr. Wild’s piano transcription of Marcello’s Adagio, Mozart’s Sonata in F Major K. 332, Beethoven’s Thirty-Two Variations in C minor, Balakirev’s Piano Sonata No. 1 in B-flat minor, Chopin’s Four Impromptus, and Mr. Wild’s piano transcription of the Mexican Hat Dance (Jarabe Tapatio) . This disc was released in November of 2003 by Ivory Classics and titled Earl Wild at 88 on the 88’s’ (CD-73005). Earl Wild’s lengthy career as a performing artist began long before his initial Ivory Classics release in 1997; many of his recordings were made available in the CD format by Chesky Records as either original releases or re-mastered re-releases. These discs included Mr. Wild’s historic 1965 recordings of Rachmaninoff’s complete piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Other Chesky CD releases which feature Mr. Wild appearing as soloist with orchestra include the piano and orchestra works of: Chopin, Dohnányi (Variations), Fauré, Grieg, Liszt, MacDowell, Saint-Saëns, and Tchaikovsky. Ivory Classics is proud to release several newly re-mastered CDs featuring Mr. Wild’s performances of some of the world’s greatest repertoire for solo piano. These re-releases began with Earl Wild’s Legendary Rachmaninoff Song Transcriptions released in 2004, and continued with, a disc of Chopin’s Scherzos and Ballades and solo piano works by Nicolai Medtner - released in 2005. The Beethoven Hammerklavier Sonata and Complete Chopin Etudes, Op. 10, Op. 25 including the Trois Nouvelles were released in 2006. In 2007 Ivory released Earl Wild’s 1981 Baldwin Piano sessions of Chopin solo works as well as re-mastered Mr. Wild’s Scharwenka and Paderewski Piano Concertos. In 2007 Ivory Classics released its first DVD – a live performance of Earl Wild performing Liszt, Wild About Liszt from Wynyard in 1986 (Ivory DVD-77777). In 2008, Ivory released a two disc set of Mr. Wild playing Rachmaninoff; Variations on a Theme by Chopin, Variations on a Theme by Corelli, Complete Preludes, Op. 23, and Op. 32, and the Piano Sonata No. 2. We continue with re-mastered works with this release. Each of these original digital performances have been re-mastered utilizing the latest 24-bit technology, featuring interesting artwork, rare photographs, and insightful liner notes. In 2005 Ivory Classics released a newly recorded disc celebrating Earl Wild’s ninetieth birthday! For this special occasion, Mr. Wild selected to record repertoire by Bach (Partita No. 1), Scriabin (Sonata No. 4), Franck (Prelude, Chorale and Fugue) and Schumann (Fantasiestucke Op. 12) (CD-75002). Earl Wild celebrated his ninetieth birthday by performing recitals in numerous U.S. cities as well as in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. The tour culminated with an official birthday recital at Carnegie Hall in New York City on November 29, 2005.
Mr. Wild is currently completing his memoirs. Mr. Wild’s numerous piano transcriptions and compositions are published by Michael Rolland Davis Productions, ASCAP Available:
on line: www.EarlWild.com
email: mrdavisprod@sprintmail.com
Telephone: 760-327-5826