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Wow, this guy's incredible!
Topic Started: Dec 6 2005, 03:54 PM (123 Views)
pianojerome
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HOLY CARP!!!
from the liner notes to one of his Bach recordings:


Peter Schickele is truly a Renaissance man. As a pianist, he was a child prodigy, playing his first concerto concerto concert with the New York Philharmonic (Mozart No. 18, Beethoven No. 4, and Hindemith Four Temperaments) at the age of eight, but it wasn't untill he was well into his eleventh year that he began the collaboration with Jascha Heifetz that catapulted him into global reknown; he was, in fact, the only accompanist in the great violinist's long career who was allowed to share the same size type face in advertising program copy. He is also the only pianist ever to have performed the entire Beethoven sonata cycle in one Lunchtime Concert, and his traversal of Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jesus on 20 successive Lawrence Welk television programs is still considered by many to be the most uncompromising example of crossover in the history of mass media.

As a conductor he has appeared with every single orchestra in the United States (some of them many times) except the New York Mills Philharmonic in Minnesota, as well as with all the major orchestras abroad, although he now limits his orchestral engagements to 100 concerts a year in order to make room for his blossoming career as an opera director; after conducting the Ring Cycle at Bayreuth next season, he will mount the Met's new production of Poulenc's The Dialogues of the Carmelites, set in a porn shop on pre-Disney 42nd Street. Schwann publishes a separate catalogue for his discography.

Mr. Schickele's Pulitzer Prize was timed, many feel, to coincide with the premiere of the work that put the Iowa-born composer ahead of Haydn in symphonic output, and ahead of Mahler and Maw in terms of the length of an individual piece: the Symphony of the Plains of North Dakota, Especially the Stretch Between Jamestown and Valley City lasts approximately eight hours, including the massive "detour" movement called Devil's Lake. His String Quartet No. 38 ("Sad Parameters") has been played in every city in the world with a population of more than 100,000.

The dozens of books that have flowed from his typewriter (computers, he says, are for people in a hurry) range from topics such as the training of ska musicians to the analysis of the implied harmonies of whale songs, with helpful hints about making piano settings. The seventh volume of his autobiography, A Pilgrim on the Staff of Life: The Puberty Years, will be published next summer.

In spite of his busy schedule, Mr. Schikele finds time for hobbies, which include reading, quoits, and mathematical puzzles. He recently donated his midge collection to the Museum of Natural History in New York City, and his solo ascent of Mount Everest in sneakers has become a legend among mountaineers, although Peter, with characteristic modesty, says, "Well, you know, they were really expensive sneakers, the inflatable kind, and I filled them with antifreeze."

When he is not on the road or relaxing in his Greenland hideaway, "America's most talented, accomplished, and beloved musician" (The Christian Science Monitor) lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his wife and 27 children.
Sam
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LadyElton
Fulla-Carp
Wow! He is incredible. I mean 27 children? :eek:
Hilary aka LadyElton
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