Wild, Earl

Summary: Earl Wild was born in Pittsburgh in 1915. Wild served as pianist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937-1944) and gave a series of Liszt concerts (1944-1980s). Wild was also a significant transcriber of piano music, particularly of Chopin and Liszt pieces, and composed original music. In addition, Wild maintained a long concert career until his 90th year and held teaching positions at the Eastman School of Music, Pennsylvania State University, the Juilliard School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, Ohio State University and Carnegie Mellon University. Earl Wild died on January 23, 2010.

Full History: Earl Wild was born in Pittsburgh in 1915 and was one of the last in a long line of pianist/composers. He began his studies at the age of three and was nurtured in the romantic traditions of piano playing through his studies with Scharwenka pupil Selmar Jansen, Busoni pupil Egon Petri and Ravel pupil Paul Doguereau. Wilds musical personality was also significantly shaped by pianists he heard in his youth such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ignace Paderewski and Vladimir de Pachmann. Wild served as the pianist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1944 where he became the first American pianist to perform on television (1939) and the soloist for the only performance of Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue ever conducted by Arturo Toscanini (1942). Wilds many performances of the Rhapsody in Blue and the Concerto in F earned him wide recognition as a Gershwin interpreter during the early portion of his career.

Wild made his New York debut at Town Hall in 1944 in a program that featured works by Haydn, Schumann, Rachmaninoff and Medtner. A subsequent Town Hall concert in 1954 and other concerts in the 1950s began to establish Wild as a sovereign interpreter of the music of Liszt. Wilds identification with Liszt reached its pinnacle with a series of recitals given in 1986 in honor of the centenary of Liszts death. Wilds triad of Liszt concerts, entitled "Liszt the Poet", "Liszt the Transcriber" and "Liszt the Virtuoso" were given at Carnegie Hall as well as many other concert halls in the United States and abroad. Wilds recitals and appearances with orchestras were weighted heavily toward the romantic repertoire and he frequently performed all-Chopin or all-Liszt recitals. Wild also revived neglected concertos by Scharwenka and Paderewski, and he championed other lesser known romantic composers such as Medtner. Wild played a significant role in reviving the programming of piano transcriptions, a practice that had largely fallen out of favor in the middle twentieth century. Wilds November 1981 concert at Carnegie Hall called "The Art of Transcription" featured only transcriptions, including works transcribed by Liszt, Sgambati, Thalberg and Wild himself. Transcriptions appeared regularly on Wilds programs, including his own transcriptions of songs by Rachmaninoff and Gershwin. Wild also composed original works, including Revelations (1962), an Easter oratorio that was subsidized and premiered by ABC television, a set of variations for piano and orchestra on themes by Stephen Foster nick-named "Doo-Dah", Variations (1992), and a Piano Sonata (2000).

As a performer, Wild was praised for his technique, which he maintained throughout a long concert career that continued until his 90th year, and for his flexible treatment of rhythm which hearkened back to the playing of "golden age" pianists. Earl Wild accumulated an extensive discography including recordings of over 30 concertos and 400 solo piano pieces. He won a Grammy award for "Best Instrumental Soloist without Orchestra" (1997) for his CD recording, The Romantic Master . As a teacher, Wild held positions at the Eastman School of Music, Pennsylvania State University, the Juilliard School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, Ohio State University and Carnegie Mellon University. Earl Wild died on January 23, 2010. A Walk on the Wild Side, an extensive memoir by Earl Wild, was published by the Ivory Classics Foundation in 2011.