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Rosalyn Tureck, Pianist Specializing in Bach, Dies at 88
New York Times ^ | July 19, 2003 | ALLAN KOZINN

Posted on 07/19/2003 5:46:56 PM PDT by Argh

Rosalyn Tureck, a pianist and harpsichordist who played an important part in the revival of interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and who devoted more than six decades to performing, researching, teaching and writing about his works, died on Thursday at her home in Riverdale, the Bronx. She was 88.

Ms. Tureck, born in Chicago, spent many years living in London, where she acquired a regal bearing and the hint of an upper-crust British accent. She was as comfortable in literary and scientific circles as in musical ones, and was ahead of her time in arguing for a view of Bach, and of music-making, that drew on scholarship, yet was entirely nondogmatic and even fairly freewheeling.

She could argue, for example, that it was crucial to understand Bach not as a modern thinker, or as the beginning of music as we know it today, but as the peak of musical development from medieval times through the Protestant Reformation. In the same discussion, though, she could speak enthusiastically about performances of Bach on electronic instruments.

Early in her career, before she decided to focus entirely on Bach, she was an avid interpreter of contemporary music and a composer herself, although she did not perform her works publicly. And because she studied as a child with Jan Chiapusso, a Dutch-Italian concert pianist born in Java, she was introduced to the sounds of the gamelan and a variety of Asian and African instruments decades before the current interest in world music.

Ms. Tureck was born on Dec. 14, 1914, and became interested in the piano when she was 4. An intuitive musician with perfect pitch, she learned the instrument at first by imitating what she heard at an older sister's piano lessons. Her first teacher was Sophia Brilliant-Liven, a Russian pianist who had been a teaching assistant to Anton Rubinstein. Ms. Tureck studied the Romantics with her, as well as Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart and late-19th- and early-20th-century Russian composers.

In those days, Bach was widely considered to be primarily didactic music, good for developing students' hand muscles but too dry for the concert hall. Ms. Tureck, though, was fascinated by his work, and at 14, when she began studying with Chiapusso, she made a point of memorizing a prelude and fugue from "The Well-Tempered Clavier" between lessons. Chiapusso was the first to suggest that she specialize in Bach, and although she continued to study the full range of the piano repertory, she also began to focus on Bach's music, as well as his techniques of ornamentation and the kinds of instruments he used.

When she was 16, Ms. Tureck moved to New York to study with Olga Samaroff at the Juilliard School, and immediately declared her interest in focusing on Bach. Samaroff was encouraging, but others were not. When she entered the Naumburg Competition, she made it to the finals and presented an all-Bach program as her closing recital. As she told the story years later, the members of the jury said they could not give her the award "because they were sure that nobody could make a career in Bach."

Ms. Tureck's first public performance in New York was not as a pianist, but as a soloist on the theremin, an electronic instrument played by moving one's hands through an electronic field, usually between two metal poles. She played a Bach concerto. Her first real splash, however, was at Town Hall in November 1937, when she played six all-Bach concerts, a series regarded as daring, but that began to win her a following. She also maintained a parallel career, playing recitals of Chopin, Scriabin and Debussy, and in the 1940's, she performed Brahms and Beethoven concertos with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.

Ms. Tureck continued to pursue her interest in new music as well. She gave the premieres of works written for her by David Diamond, William Schuman and Vittorio Giannini, and the European premieres of works by Aaron Copland and Wallingford Riegger. She also formed Composers of Today, an organization dedicated to bringing composers and performers together. Under its auspices, works by Messiaen, Krenek and Hovhaness were given their first New York performances. The group sponsored a concert by the composer Vladimir Ussachevsky that is said to have been the first program of taped electronic music in the United States.

In the late 1950's, though, Ms. Tureck began shedding her activities that did not relate to Bach. Since 1947, she had been spending more time in Europe, where the demand for her Bach concerts was greater than in the United States. In 1957 she moved to London, where she formed a chamber orchestra, the Tureck Bach Players, as well as the International Bach Society, meant to be a forum in which musicologists and performers could exchange ideas. In 1981 she started another organization with a similar mission, the Tureck Bach Institute.

Ms. Tureck returned to New York in 1977, after 20 years abroad, and announced her arrival with a 40th-anniversary celebration of her Town Hall Bach series, performed at Carnegie Hall. She opened the series with two performances of the "Goldberg Variations" in one evening: first on the harpsichord, then on the piano. The focus of her career, however, continued to be Europe, and in the 1980's she moved back to England, returning to New York only in the fall of 2001.

She continued to make recordings, including a series for the VAI label, as well as one of her signature pieces, the "Goldberg Variations," for Deutsche Grammophon in 1998. In recent years, Deutsche Grammophon also reissued some of her classic Bach recordings, including her 1953 account of "The Well-Tempered Clavier." She published numerous articles on Bach, as well as a three-volume collection of studies, "An Introduction to the Performance of Bach."

Ms. Tureck is survived by a sister, Sonya Goldsmith, of Pittsburgh, and two nephews, Dr. Alan Bramowitz, of Pittsburgh, and Dr. Stewart Bramson, of Grasonville, Md.

She was scheduled to perform on Thursday evening at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival at Mannes College of Music in Manhattan, but had to withdraw when she became ill. Instead, the college presented a tribute to her, which she was unable to attend. A friend, Rabbi David M. Posner, said she died a few minutes after the tribute ended.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: bach; classicalmusic
Rosalyn Tureck was also a great friend of William F. Buckley, Jr.
1 posted on 07/19/2003 5:46:57 PM PDT by Argh
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To: Argh
Rosalyn Tureck was also a great friend of William F. Buckley, Jr.

As I understand it, his teacher.

TV audiences were treated on at least one occasion to Miss Tureck as a guest on Firing Line. She played Bach on a harspichord, as God intended it to be played.

A great talent who would, unfortunately, never make it in today's music world.

2 posted on 07/19/2003 5:53:48 PM PDT by logician2u
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To: logician2u
She played Bach on a harspichord, as God intended it to be played.

God, and Bach, who some might say were one and the same. :^)

Some of her VAI recordings were taped at a birthday party for WFB in his home, arranged as a surprise by Mrs. Buckley.

3 posted on 07/19/2003 5:59:29 PM PDT by Argh
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To: Argh
God, and Bach, who some might say were one and the same. :^) Some of her VAI recordings were taped at a birthday party for WFB in his home, arranged as a surprise by Mrs. Buckley.

Glenn Gould considered her to be the superior of Wanda Landowski. I saw her on public television's biography of Bach, playing the master on several different keyboard instruments.

4 posted on 07/19/2003 6:18:37 PM PDT by UbIwerks
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To: Argh
you GO, arghy, posting 'CULTCHA' to FR!! ; )
5 posted on 07/19/2003 6:20:55 PM PDT by xsmommy
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To: UbIwerks
I share Gould's opinion, although Landowska did so much to re-popularise the harpsichord, thank goodness!

I remember listening to my first Gould recording ages ago, about 2 in the morning on the headphones, the Goldberg Variations. I almost had a little accident when this ghostly moaning intruded itself on my Bach! Gould's playing is so often rivetting, but his vocalising during the music drives me nuts! But since I'm Canadian, I guess I'm not supposed to pay any attention to that. :^)

6 posted on 07/19/2003 6:30:07 PM PDT by Argh
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To: xsmommy
Well, SOMEBODY'S got to!!
7 posted on 07/19/2003 6:30:45 PM PDT by Argh
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To: Argh
I assume that Tureck's obit in the NYT clearly said close to the top that, "despite her musical renown, she was prohibited from joining the Masters' Club in Atlanta." The NYT do love to beat a propaganda drum.
8 posted on 07/19/2003 7:25:03 PM PDT by Tacis
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To: Tacis
Hahahaha, I didn't see that!
9 posted on 07/19/2003 7:54:13 PM PDT by Argh
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To: Argh; boris
Thank you for posting this. Ms. Tureck's passing marks a great loss to the music world, especially to lovers of Bach.
10 posted on 07/19/2003 11:16:42 PM PDT by betty boop (We can have either human dignity or unfettered liberty, but not both. -- Dean Clancy)
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To: betty boop
You're welcome.

It wouldn't get used very often, but I suppose it might be nice occasionally to have a classical music ping list around here.

11 posted on 07/20/2003 2:00:53 AM PDT by Argh
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To: Argh
Bump for Sunday.
12 posted on 07/20/2003 7:17:48 AM PDT by Argh
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To: Argh
Bump.
13 posted on 07/21/2003 9:04:57 AM PDT by Argh
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To: Argh
As a quite good pianist at one point in my life, I often used to vocalize while playing. When you get totally caught up in the music you are playing it is entirely natural to do that. I do think that Glenn Gould played the Goldberg Variations much too fast.
14 posted on 07/21/2003 9:11:41 AM PDT by vikingcelt
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To: vikingcelt
Oh, I undersand, but it ruins those parts of the music for me, although I know many people don't mind Gould's (and other performers') vocalisings.
15 posted on 07/21/2003 9:19:24 AM PDT by Argh
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