Karol Szymanowski

Celebrated Polish pianist and composer Karol Szymanowski was born in 1882 in a small village in Ukraine into a Catholic family of wealthy Polish nobles. His compositional style progressed from post-Wagnerian romanticism to impressionism, then orientalism, finally settling on inspiration from Polish folk music. Part of it was geography, with Protestant Germany to the west, Orthodox Russia to the east and Islamic Turkey to the south. All of these cultures were reflected in his music. Tracking this musical journey, Karol became the foremost Polish composer of the early twentieth century.

He was also a distinguished homosexual. Szymanowski fell deeply in love with a 15-year-old Russian boy, Boris Kochno (Бори́с Евге́ньевич Кохно́), and he wrote four explicitly gay poems for him. Szymanowski later rediscovered Kochno in Paris, learning that Boris had become the lover and collaborator of Diaghilev (see sidebar), before moving on to a torrid affair with the American song-writer Cole Porter (see sidebar). Szymanowski also authored a two-volume gay novel, Efebos (1918), of which only fragments survive. Following two visits to Sicily as the guest of a wealthy male friend and admirer, Szymanowski told the great Polish pianist Artur Rubenstein, “There I saw a few young men bathing, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They could have been models for Antinous (see sidebar).” Rubenstein related to others that Szymanowski had thus confirmed his homosexuality. At ease with his sexual orientation, Karol wrote some of the most ecstatic music ever composed for the opera house in “King Roger” (Król Roger, 1924), in which a Sicilian king falls in love with a shepherd.

Curiously, Szymanowski was more highly regarded outside of Poland during his lifetime. During the last two decades, however, there has been a renaissance of Szymanowski’s music, and his works are programmed all over the world. There are hundreds of YouTube videos of his music.

Szymanowski died from tuberculosis in Switzerland in 1937 at age 54.

Sources: Wikipedia, Interlude.hk, Queer Places, Bay Area Reporter

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns: 1835-1921

NOTE: Your blogger recently performed an organ work by Saint-Saëns, so this post has been expanded and updated.

When his father died when he was only three months old, Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was raised by his mother in Paris and continued to live with her until her death. He became one of the world’s most famous composers in his day, and he was a homosexual possessed of a complicated private life, which often revealed his dark side.

Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy (on the level of Mozart), and made his debut as a concert pianist in 1846, before his eleventh birthday. As an encore, Saint-Saëns offered to play any of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas from memory. Word of this incredible experience spread across Europe and as far as the United States, where it was mentioned in an article in a Boston newspaper. Having all 32 of Beethoven’s sonatas in ones fingers, ready for concert performance, was an unheard-of feat (then as now), all the more astonishing when offered by a ten year old.

By the age of 13, Saint-Saëns was attending the Paris Conservatory. He soon gained recognition among his peers as an organ virtuoso, eventually attaining the highly coveted position of chief organist at the Madeleine Church in Paris, a post he held from 1858, at the age of 23, until he was 42 years old. His weekly organ improvisations captured the attention of all Paris. As a composer, he was highly versatile, writing operas, symphonies, concertos, much chamber music, masses and other choral works, songs and solo literature for organ and piano. His opera Samson et Dalila still ranks among the standard repertoire of opera houses all over the world. His music was wildly popular during his lifetime, and he was well-connected with other composers, particularly Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt. Gabriel Fauré, who was Saint-Saëns's favorite pupil, soon became his closest friend.

His now popular Le Carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals, 1886), for two pianos and orchestra, was intended as a private entertainment for friends, and Saint-Saëns forbade its public performance during his lifetime. The part of the narrator, now frequently included during performance, was added by others after his death. It is a little-known fact that Saint-Saëns had the distinction of being the first noted composer to write a musical score for a motion picture, The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (L'assassinat du duc de Guise, 1908), featuring actors of the Comédie Française in Paris.

Once called a second Mozart, Saint-Saëns soon made many enemies, who were envious of his stellar success and disdainful of his biting sarcasm. Later in life he was declared to be a “composer of bad music well written.” In old age he came to be mocked for his rabid conservatism, his dislike of modern music, the campaigns he mounted against French composers Claude Debussy and Cesar Franck, his shocked disapproval of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (allegedly infuriated over what he considered the misuse of the bassoon in the ballet's opening bars) and his insistence, during World War I, that all German music be suppressed. He was never shy with opinion.

Saint-Saëns was a true polymath. In addition to conquering the world of music as composer, conductor, critic, teacher and concert organist and pianist, he excelled in the fields of geology, archaeology, botany, mathematics and lepidoptery. He held discussions with Europe's finest scientists and wrote scholarly articles on acoustics, occult sciences, ancient theatre decoration, and early musical instruments.  Saint-Saëns wrote a philosophical work that spoke of science and art replacing religion, and his pessimistic and atheistic ideas foreshadowed Existentialism. Other literary achievements included poetry and a successful farcical play. He was also a member of the Astronomical Society of France, giving lectures on mirages; he had a telescope made to his own specifications and planned concerts to correspond to astronomical events, such as solar eclipses.

The private life of Camille Saint-Saëns was filled with turmoil. He was homosexual but realized how much marrying would bolster his reputation. Understandably, he showed little outward sign of wanting to marry. However in 1875, at the age of almost 40, he began an affair with nineteen year old Marie-Laure Truffot, which led to marriage. Immediately after their wedding, Saint-Saëns declared that he was too busy for a honeymoon and took Marie straight home to live with his mother. Thereafter the composer treated his wife with deep disdain, until the arrival of children brought out a more sympathetic side. But tragedy intervened when both children died within six weeks of each other in 1878. André, aged two, fell from a fourth floor window, and soon afterward his baby brother Jean became ill and died. Saint-Saëns blamed Marie for the children's deaths, and a short time later he walked out on her in the middle of a holiday trip. Though there was no divorce, Marie never saw him again.

Saint-Saëns was solitary and secretive, prone to disappearing for weeks at a time. He could also be a remarkable host, often entertaining friends lavishly at his Paris home, where his performances in drag were well-known among his circle, particularly his impersonation of Marguerite, the female soprano lead in Charles Gounod's opera Faust. He is reputed to have danced in ballerina tutus for the entertainment of fellow gay composer, Tchaikovsky.

After abandoning his wife, Saint-Saëns traveled extensively. He began spending winters in French-speaking Algeria, which became a favored holiday spot for European homosexuals who enjoyed the adolescent male companionship easily available there. He was quoted as saying, "I am not a homosexual, I am a pederast." Saint-Saëns died of pneumonia in Algiers, at the age of 86, on December 16, 1921.

Have a listen to his hugely popular orchestral work, Danse Macabre. I’m sure you’ll recognize it.

Trivia: Pianist Franz Liszt made an astonishing piano solo transcription of this piece.

Sviatoslav Richter

Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997), like Vladimir Horowitz, was a closeted gay man who had a life-long female companion. Richter was a Soviet sponsored cultural ambassador who had everything to lose if his sexual nature reached the public eye. Consequently, biographers ignore or gloss over anything about his personal relationships. However, we are left with a towering musical legacy, especially through recordings and videotaped performances. Most critics agree that Richter was one of the greatest pianists of all time.

Back in the days when your blogger was a university piano performance major, I knew nothing about Richter’s personal proclivities, but most of my fellow students repeated the rampant (and true) gay rumors about Horowitz and Shura Cherkassky, another Russian keyboard titan.

Richter, who was stunningly handsome as a young man, suffered from many personal demons. He was withdrawn and not given to interviews, and often he insisted on performing in completely darkened halls illuminated by a single light bulb above the keyboard. Subject to periods of keen depression, he went through a period during which he had to travel with a plastic lobster in order to cope with the rigors of constant performing to unrealistic public expectations. I’m not making this up.

Nevertheless, Richter left us with recordings that remain benchmarks of certain repertoire. His vast repertoire encompassed eighty-odd recital programs, everything from Bach and Handel to Gershwin. He was also a quick study. He learned Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7, which was dedicated to him, in four days, thus able to meet the deadline for its premiere.

But enough words. Let’s listen to his music while we marvel at his astonishing technique.

Hutch Hutchinson: Gigolo extraordinaire

When the hit television series Downton Abbey* added Jack Ross, a jazz cabaret singer, to its cast, few viewers on this side of the pond realized that the role of Jack Ross was based on a real-life personage, Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson (1900-1969), an immensely talented black man who made a fortune as a cabaret singer and pianist, while insinuating himself into the upper echelons of high society in Paris and London. He moved about in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce to and from his grand house in Hampstead, exquisitely dressed in custom-tailored finery. Equally spectacular was his crash landing after falling out of favor, ending his life on the cusp of penury.

*Your blogger must be the last person on earth who has never seen a single episode.

Hutch was a philanderer, seducer, gigolo and a pathological liar, constantly reinventing himself and overstating his credentials. He was also handsome, talented, devastatingly charming and notoriously well endowed – not to mention rabidly bisexual, possessed of a voracious sexual appetite. Among his male lovers were Cole Porter and Ivor Novello; among females he was intimate with Tallulah Bankhead and Merle Oberon, not to mention nobles, royals and the merely rich, but it was his torrid affair with Countess Edwina Mountbatten (wife of bisexual Lord Louis Mounbatten*) that brought him down. Afterward, although Edwina’s name was cleared (the plaintiffs wrongly assumed that the negro with whom she was having sexual relations was singer Paul Robeson), Buckingham Palace refused to have Hutch participate in Royal Command performances, and Lord Beaverbrook insisted that Hutch's name was never to be mentioned again in any of his newspapers. As a result, Hutch’s professional and social decline was precipitous.

*Lord Louis was involved in extramarital affairs of his own and was none too particular about the gender. Behind his back his whispered nickname was "Lord Mountbottom."


Leslie Hutchinson was born of mixed parentage on the island of Grenada, making him a British citizen. He attended the best schools and was celebrated as a piano prodigy. While in his mid-teens his father sent him to study medicine in Nashville, TN, at one of the few schools that allowed black students, but his heart was not in it. He stole away to NYC, settling in Harlem, where he became a successful stride pianist; soon Fats Waller and Duke Ellington were included in his circle of friends, and among his patrons were the Vanderbilts, who hired him to play piano for private functions. One of the reasons he was not well known in the US is that he departed from NYC after a stay of only five years.

Hutch left New York for Paris, where he started his climb to the world of high society. He landed a residency at Joe Zelli's club, where he met Cole Porter, who was living in Paris at the time. But it was in London that his career reached its peak during the late twenties and thirties. Primarily just a pianist prior to settling into London, he began singing while accompanying himself on the piano. As a cabaret singer, he reigned supreme, much like Bobby Short in NYC a generation later. Hutch became a favorite cabaret singer and protégé of the then Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) and was regularly heard on BBC radio. During this time he was the highest-paid musical star in Britain.

Although Hutch had a wife and child at home, most visitors assumed that the woman of the house was his servant. A black Anglo-Chinese woman, wife Ella was always excluded from Hutch’s professional and social life, which tended toward scandal. Hutch fathered seven more children with six different mothers, all of them white. And that's not counting the lovers who elected to have abortions.

Few entertainers could blow through money at the pace set by Hutch: houses, cars, sartorial finery and a decided bent toward betting on the horses. Accustomed to being pampered and gifted by legions of high-born women, his finances took a nosedive after his fall from society. After the changes in musical style and tastes that took place after WW II, Hutch eventually had to live on receipts from occasional jobs in small venues, and he often had to borrow money to pay his bills. He let himself go physically and drank too much, thus his trademark slim physique and good looks were forever lost. During the 1950s he had a comeback of sorts in India, where his homosexual inclinations once more rose to the forefront. By 1967, two years before his death, he had to sell his beloved Hampstead house (below) to settle bank debts.

 When Hutch died from pneumonia in 1969, he was almost an unknown. Only 42 mourners attended his funeral service, and, ironically, it was Lord Mountbatten who paid for the burial costs.

High Society’s Favorite Gigolo, a one-hour documentary on the life of Leslie Hutchinson, was broadcast on British television in 2008. Hutch, a biography by Charlotte Breese (1999), was adapted as a musical play by Joe Evans (London, 2013; music by Cole Porter). A National Scandal (London, 2018) by Eddie Lewisohn was a play about the relationship between Hutch and Edwina Mountbatten.

His incomparable rendition of The Way You Look Tonight (music by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields):

Cole Porter wrote I'm a Gigolo for -- and about -- Hutch Hutchinson, who delivered the first-ever performance of the song in 1929:

Sources:

Hutch -- A Biography of Leslie Hutchinson by Charlotte Breese

Wikipedia

Dorset magazine

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/leslie-hutchinson/

Charles Griffes

We know that the young musician from Elmira, NY, had a thing for men in uniform, because he wrote about it in his meticulously kept diaries. Subsequent studies abroad opened his mind to the emerging European homophile movement of Edward Carpenter, Magnus Hirschfeld, Oscar Wilde and André Gide, and he began to feel more comfortable with his sexual orientation. Nevertheless, once he returned to the United States in 1907 to take a job as a teacher at the Hackley School for Boys* in Tarrytown, NY, he became more circumspect and lived out the remainder of his short life as a closeted man. His departure from Europe was necessitated by the death of his father, leaving the young Griffes to support his widowed mother and other family members.

A brilliant concert pianist and composer, Charles Griffes (1884-1920, pronounced GRIFF-ess), was one of the first American composers to adapt avant-guard influences that were championed by Debussy and other Europeans. Called an "American Impressionist" by critics who didn't know how else to categorize him, he wrote highly listenable and sophisticated classical music that received praise from critics and composers, most notably Stokowski, Busoni, Pierre Monteux  and Prokofiev. His symphonic works received performances by the prestigious New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony orchestras.

His home-town music teacher financially supported his flight from Elmira to study piano and composition in Berlin, Germany, while Griffes was still in his late teens. During his time in Europe he had affairs with several men, most notably Emil Joel, an older fellow student. Over a period of four years Joel guided Griffes’ artistic development, procured concert tickets and introduced him to such prominent musical figures as Richard Strauss, Enrico Caruso, Ferrucio Busoni, and Engelbert Humperdinck, with whom Griffes studied music. Joel even supported Griffes financially, enabling him to extend his time in Europe by a year.

As comfortable as he became among his peers in gay circles, Griffes never divulged his orientation to straight friends or associates. There was too much at stake for a man who had to support himself, especially when the job he held until his untimely death was at a boys’ school. Griffes was in a precarious position when he became infatuated with one of his male students, because no man of his time and position could have been openly gay without public disgrace. Nevertheless, he was constantly frustrated that gay men could not meet openly in public.

*The Hackley School (shown at right) is a private, exclusive all-male prep school in Tarrytown, NY. Internationally renowned gay architect Philip Johnson was a 1923 graduate just three years after Griffes's death. Most of the students go on to attend Harvard University.


However, Griffes was able to sneak away from Tarrytown to sample the gay life of NYC. He was known to patronize the Lafayette Place and Produce Exchange bath houses, for reasons that were obvious. He even entered into an intimate relationship with Officer John Meyer, a married New York policeman (remember that fetish for men in uniform).

Griffes composed song cycles, piano pieces, orchestral works and chamber music, much of the latter written as incidental music for stage plays. It is astonishing that he was able to do this while holding down a full-time job on the faculty of the Hackley School*. He composed, performed, arranged, revised and orchestrated everything, acted as his own agent and overcame difficulties with his publisher (G. Schirmer), all without outside assistance. Unable to afford editors or copyists, he had to correct proofs and prepare copies of his own large orchestral scores against the mounting deadlines that came with his enhanced reputation.

His most enduring compositions are "The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan" (1917), "The White Peacock" (1915), "Poem for Flute and Orchestra" (1918), and "Two Sketches Based on Indian Themes" (1916-1920). He also wrote a bold, passionate and difficult "Sonata for Piano" (1918).

Note: adjust your speakers, because this performance of The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan starts very softly and slowly:




Tragically, at the height of his fame, Griffes contracted influenza in 1919. Shortly after a Carnegie Hall performance of his music, he collapsed at the Hackley School for Boys in early December and was subsequently hospitalized. He died on April 20, 1920, only 35 years old, and his funeral was held in New York City. Musicologist B. Collins relates a poignant tale about the funeral service, held at the Church of the Messiah at Park Avenue and 34th Street. Unexpectedly, the strains of a Bach chorale wafted from across the street, where a music festival was being held in the 71st Regiment armory.  Standing on the parapets of the armory building, a choir of trombonists played a sort of “accidental” requiem. Both the sight and sound of the performance would have pleased Griffes, as all of the trombonists were in uniform. The building that replaced that church is a structure that now hosts rehearsals of the New York City Gay Men's Chorus.

Griffes had kept a diary in German in which he reported on his various forays to bathhouses and other favorite gay-friendly haunts. Unfortunately, several of the diaries were destroyed by his sister after his death to prevent widespread knowledge of Griffes's gay recreational New York City life, his attraction to men in uniform, and his long-term relationship with a married policeman. At the time of his death he was working on a festival drama based on the poetry of Walt Whitman.

Sources: Most of the information in this post comes from biographical studies by Howard Pollack, B. Collins and Thomas Riis.

Pierre Boulez

Mr. Boulez in 1971.
Photo by Larry Morris


When the great French composer, conductor and pianist Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) died at the age of 90 at his home in Baden Baden last month, there was much Internet chatter about his sexual orientation. Obituaries in major newspapers and journals mentioned that Boulez was “tightly guarded” about his personal life, but music critic Norman Lebrecht, who knew him for decades, stated that Mr. Boulez was gay. Boulez was extremely closeted, often introducing Hans Messner, his German lover of more than fifty years, as his “valet.” That Boulez (the “z” is not silent) was homosexual was one of the music world’s worst kept secrets.

Mr. Boulez enjoyed a first tier international career, holding conducting positions in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, England and the United States, and his numerous recordings earned him twenty-six Grammy Awards. Boulez did not use a baton, using only his hands to conduct, in the fashion of Dimitri Mitropoulos, Leopold Stokowski and fellow Frenchman  Georges Prêtre.

As an opera conductor, Pierre Boulez was most famously associated with Bayreuth, conducting Parsifal and the Ring Cycle. In Paris he founded the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) at the Centre Pompidou and the Ensemble Intercontemporain (EIC). In the United States he was conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic and was composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall (1999-2003).

As a composer, he was a champion of the avant-garde, writing atonal, electronic and serial music, although in later years composition took a back seat to conducting. He championed twentieth century composers, programming major works by Berg, Mahler, Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Webern and Varèse.

After a 2012 eye operation left him with impaired vision, he cancelled conducting engagements, and a shoulder injury from a fall kept him from attending the many 90th birthday celebrations held throughout the world in 2015. Both Columbia Records and Deutsche Grammophon issued limited edition box sets (67 CDs and 44 CDs, respectively) of his recordings in honor of his 90th birthday. Last month BBC Four broadcast an hour-long documentary, “Pierre Boulez at the BBC: Master and Maverick.”

Pianist Earl Wild

Earl Wild was one of the greatest virtouso pianists of the 20th century, often compared to Horowitz and Rachmaninov. Openly gay, Wild lived in Palm Springs, California, and Columbus, Ohio, with his domestic partner of 38 years, Michael Rolland Davis. Wild had an outsized talent and played flamboyantly. He specialized in piano transcriptions, performing the music of Lizst and Rachmaninov, but also arranged and composed extensively. In a nod to a fellow gay man, his Piano Sonata (2000) features a 4-minute toccata dedicated to Ricky Martin. Wild’s landmark piano fantasy on themes from Gershwin’s opera,  “Porgy and Bess,” was followed by his own solo piano settings of Rachmaninov and Gershwin songs. Wild lived to the ripe old age of 94. He died at home on January 23, 2010, of congestive heart disease.

Wild  was the first pianist to give a recital on television, in 1939. Nearly sixty years later, in 1997, he gave the first piano recital to be streamed live over the Internet. Over the course of his career, Wild played at the White House, gave annual recitals at Carnegie Hall (always sold out within minutes) and remained active until his final recitals and recordings in 2005.

Wild was also known as a formidable wit and saucy raconteur. When he was interviewed by David Dubal, Mr. Wild was asked about his years of playing flute in the United States Navy Band during World War II (Wild was stationed at a base outside Washington, DC). “Did you see any action?” Mr. Dubal asked. “Only in the cemetery,” Mr. Wild deadpanned.

Wild’s piano arrangement of “Mexican Hat Dance,” recorded at the age of 88! Guaranteed to put a smile on your face.



Earl Wild: Etude on Embraceable You (Gershwin)
Performed by Yeol-Eum Son
Wild’s Etudes on Gershwin’s popular songs are becoming staples of concert repertoire, especially as encores. I never thought it possible, but I think this performance actually surpasses Wild’s own interpretation.

Stephen Hough

Openly gay poet and pianist

Paderewski: Nocturne (encore at Carnegie Hall recital)



Openly gay classical pianist Stephen Hough was born in England in 1961, although he has held dual citizenship with Australia since 2005 (his father was born in Australia). Hough holds a particular interest in unusual works by pianist-composers of the late nineteenth century, of which this video clip is an example. He plays with wit, charm, sophistication, humor, lyricism and generous doses of style.

Hough also composes and arranges transcriptions for piano solo, and often features his own works in recitals. Of late he has branched out into chamber and choral music. As well, he is a noted writer and researcher, publishing essays and writing album liner notes. He is something of a renaissance man, fully indulging his interests in painting, photography and blogging.

Hough has recorded over fifty CDs, and in 2008 he won the sixth International Poetry Competition*. Hough has spoken, written and blogged about his homosexuality and its relationship to his music-making.

Instead of limiting what we know about him, as is the custom of most classical musicians, Hough is quite open about his weaknesses, about moments when he’s deeply questioned his career choice as a touring musician, about battling ego issues, fighting nerves, and overcoming moments when he says he fails to reach his own high standards. Hearing him talk so openly and honestly about his vulnerabilities opens many to his art. I am a pianist myself, and I regard Hough as one of the top pianists of our time.

*Excerpt from "Early Rose", a prize-winning poem by Stephen Hough

...To the garden, awake,
Tiptoe, quick, go
Slick-stairs down the
Steps to the pre-dew
Night morn before the
Dawn's birth is born.
Follow to the foliage where,
Hidden as the future's
Fall or rise, the rose –
Petals closed – will bud-burst
A billion atoms of beauty...

Andy Bey

Jazz pianist and vocalist

Andy Bey is an openly gay jazz pianist and vocalist. Born in 1939 in Newark, NJ, at the age of 17 he and his siblings formed a trio called Andy and the Bey Sisters. They performed together in Europe and across the country for eleven years, recording three albums before splitting up in 1967. During the 1970s he worked with Dee Dee Bridgewater and drummer Max Roach.

Twenty years ago (1994) Bey was diagnosed as HIV-positive but has continued his career while maintaining a regimen that includes yoga and a vegetarian diet; at the time of this writing he is 74 years old and counting. Herb Jordan assisted Bey with restarting his recording career. Their album, Ballads, Blues, & Bey (1996), helped return Bey to prominence. He also  collaborated with Fred Hersch, another openly gay HIV-positive working jazz musician.

Andy Bey received the "2003 Jazz Vocalist of the Year" award by the Jazz Journalists Association. He has released four albums within the last ten years and has a reputation as a consummate ballad singer, specializing in jazz standards.

Never Let Me Go (written in 1956 by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans)

Thomas Adès

London-born composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Adès (b. 1971) is one of the “hot” classical musicians on the current international scene.  He is also an out and proud gay man who, in 2006, entered into a civil partnership with Tal Rosner, an Israeli filmmaker and video artist. The two have worked on many projects together, and their apartment in Covent Garden serves as their center of creativity.

Your blogger was lucky enough to attend the world premiere of Polaris, a multi-media work for orchestra and five video screens (music composed by Adès, moving images by Rosner), written for the opening of Miami’s New World Arts Center in January, 2011. The center, designed by superstar architect Frank Gehry, is home to the New World Symphony Orchestra, led by gay conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.

London-born Adès graduated in 1992 from King's College, Cambridge, where his degree was classified as 'double starred first', indicating outstanding academic distinction. Success piled upon success. He was made Britten Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music and in 2004 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex. By the age of 36
a retrospective of his work was presented in London, and he was the focus of festivals in France Finland.

Asyla, a work for orchestra, was premiered in 1997 by Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and received the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Adès was the youngest ever recipient of this award. Asyla has since been performed across the world, including a tour of the Far East by Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Adès composed a chamber opera, Powder Her Face (1995), which gained immediate notoriety for its musical depiction of fellatio. The Duchess character in the opera was based on the notorious Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, whose scandalous behavior in the 1960s was revealed during her divorce trial when photographs of her various sex acts were introduction into evidence.

This video clip is an excerpt from In Seven Days (2008), a creative collaboration between Adès and Rosner. The work depicts the biblical creation story via piano, video-installation and orchestra.

Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale

Duo-pianists Arthur Gold (1917-1990) and Robert Fizdale (1920-1995) made their professional debut in 1944 when they premiered two works by John Cage for prepared pianos. During subsequent decades they transformed duo-pianism through their increasing international acclaim and contributions of new repertoire by commissioning 23 two-piano works from renowned composers such as Francis Poulenc (Sonata for Two Pianos), Samuel Barber (Souvenirs), Darius Milhaud, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson, John Cage, and Paul Bowles. They also revived neglected works, most notably the two early duo concertos by Felix Mendelssohn.

The photo above dates from 1967.

The pianists created a dynamic and emotional experience for their audiences through their artistry, dazzling virtuosity, impeccable ensemble skills, and thorough attention to musical details. Because of their mass public appeal, Gold and Fizdale became the first duo-piano team to sign a recording contract with a major label, Columbia Records.

Both Gold and Fizdale were of Russian Jewish descent, and they met while they were students at Juilliard, forming a lifelong gay partnership based around their common interests of music, travel and cooking. Gold, who was born in Toronto, Canada, moved to NYC to study at Juilliard, and Chicago-born Fizdale arrived at the school three years later. They became important fixtures in New York City's artistic community and were known as “The Boys” by their close friends. They spent many months in Europe, notably Paris and Rome, and befriended composers of the group known as “Les six.” The French Government appointed Mr. Fizdale a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

When Gold began having problems with arthritis in his hands in the late 1970s, the duo turned their attention to literary projects, publishing biographies of Misia Sert (1981) and Sarah Bernhardt (1991). The couple began writing food articles for Vogue magazine and launched a television cooking show. They were also contributing editors of Architectural Digest magazine. In 1984 they published "The Gold and Fizdale Cookbook", dedicated to their friend George Balanchine, "In whose kitchen we spent many happy hours..."

Gold and Fizdale perform
Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos
New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein:

Vladimir Horowitz

UPDATED POST (original version published on Nov. 12, 2011):

Ukranian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989) was a twentieth-century pianist who embodied the grand piano style of the late nineteenth century. His legendary technique and artistry remain a source of inspiration for generations of pianists and listeners.

His solo career began in the Soviet Union, where he quickly established himself as a bravura performer possessed of an astonishing technique. He was allowed to leave Russia in 1925 as part of a mission to propagate Soviet culture abroad. However, he decided not to return and accepted the honorary citizenship of Haiti in 1929, in order to facilitate international travel. In 1945 he became a citizen of the United States.

During his early performing years Horowitz developed a reputation as an eccentric who dressed in lurid, extravagant clothing (mostly in pink and red) and hung out in sailors' bars in port cities, often seen wearing make-up. His homosexual activities fed the gossip and rumor mills.

Kenneth Leedom, who still lives in lower Manhattan, relates that long ago he answered Horowitz’s newspaper ad for a personal assistant and became his lover for five years, although Horowitz was married at the time. Leedom recalls that Horowitz had an uncontrollable temper, often yanking a corner of a tablecloth so that everything on the table crashed to the floor. Emphasis on OFTEN. In spite of frequent tantrums, Leedham said that Horowitz also had a sweet, lovable side. “He really adored me.”

Horowitz's same-sex interests at this time were no secret to his friends. In Berlin, he hired the first of these live-in “personal assistants”, who would accompany him in all his travels, both business and personal. He kept up this practice after his marriage, and his wife tolerated it. In 1933, Horowitz had performed for the first time with legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, and he soon thereafter married Toscanini's daughter, Wanda. Because of his strong sexual interest in men, friends expected the marriage to last no more than a month. The couple went on to have a daughter, but Horowitz found himself temperamentally unsuited for the role of father.

In 1940, Horowitz began psychoanalytic treatment with Dr. Lawrence Kubie, a psychiatrist who specialized in "curing" homosexuals, especially celebrities. Among Kubie’s other patients were Moss Hart and Tennessee Williams. Horowitz separated from his wife in 1949 after failing to change his sexual orientation and underwent electroshock therapy to cure depression.

Later in life Horowitz was seen in New York City's gay bars and discotheques, where he displayed a more relaxed attitude toward his homosexuality. Eventually reunited with her husband, Wanda learned to tolerate and accept his eccentricities, including his sexual attraction to men.

Horowitz's legacy is preserved through his outstanding recordings. Although Horowitz was a leading interpreter of Liszt, Schumann, and Rachmaninov, he was an insecure performer who often suffered debilitating episodes of stage fright. On many occasions he had to be literally pushed onto the stage. He was a major promoter of music by composers relatively unknown in the United States at the time: Prokofiev, Szymanowski, Scriabin, Kabalevski, Scarlatti and Clementi (example below). As well, he championed American gay composer Samuel Barber.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan awarded Horowitz the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the United States. Three years later he died of a heart attack.

Note: I remember stumbling upon his grave quite by accident in Milan, Italy, about ten years ago. I was looking for the family crypt of Arturo Toscanini in the enormous Cimitero Monumentale. When peering through the metal gates of the crypt, I noticed the gilded carved letters that indicated Horowitz was buried in the tomb of his father in law, alongside wife Wanda and daughter Sonia.








Horowitz was a great promoter of the piano sonatas of Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), at a time when Clementi was considered passé. Here Horowitz performs a movement from Clementi’s Op. 25, No. 5:

Jean-Yves Thibaudet

French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet (b. 1961) and his partner of 18 years, Paul, have homes in Los Angeles and Paris and often travel together. In fact, Thibaudet will not accept invitations unless his partner is also included.

“Very often I have invitations to go to dinner parties with heads of states or royalty or ambassadors or whoever and I’ll always say I have a companion with me and I’d like him to be invited,” says the French classical pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, age 51. “And though I don’t say it, what that basically means is, if he’s not invited, I’ll not come.”

In demand around the globe, Thibaudet tours nine months out of the year. He is a physical stand-out, with frosted hair and custom designed concert attire. His partner Paul, who works as an international marketing consultant, frequently accompanies Jean-Yves on his concert tours.  “Music has been a very important part of our relationship. When I play and he’s in the audience, there’s certain things that I know he feels. It’s not the same for me when he’s not there.”

Their passion for music isn’t restricted to the classical.  “We like jazz, we both love opera...We have a lot of pop music as well, Brazilian music, tangos. Paul knows the latest albums. So with him I’m always right on top of things.”

Thibaudet himself has made nearly 40 recordings, ranging from classical concertos and recitals to the jazz of Duke Ellington and pianist Bill Evans.

Thibaudet's concert attire is designed by Vivienne Westwood. He first asked her to design an outfit for his appearance at the London Proms in 2002, and she has been creating concert clothing for him ever since. He often wears shocking red socks when performing. “Rigid clothes just give the wrong impression of classical music, dusty, old and boring. People can relate to you more in clothes that they can identify with. I've loved fashion since I was a little boy. I met a lot of designers when I was a teenager, went to a lot of shows — and fashion became a part of my life.”

His playing may be recognized my non-classical music fans by his film performances, such as the Oscar and Golden Globe-award winning soundtrack of Universal Pictures’ film Atonement and the Oscar-nominated Pride and Prejudice. 

Jean-Yves was born in Lyon, France, where he began his piano studies at age five and made his first public appearance at age seven. At twelve, he entered the Paris Conservatory to study with Aldo Ciccolini and Lucette Descaves, a friend and collaborator of Maurice Ravel. At age fifteen, he won the Premier Prix du Conservatoire and three years later, won the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York City. In 2001, the Republic of France awarded Thibaudet the prestigious Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 2002, he was awarded the Premio Pegasus from the Spoleto Festival in Italy for his artistic achievements and his long-standing involvement with the festival. In 2007, he was awarded the Victoire d’Honneur, a lifetime career achievement award and the highest honor given by France’s Victoires de la Musique.

Photo below: a young Thibaudet before the blond highlights and designer-chic concert attire.

A personal note: I'm privileged to have tickets to hear Thibaudet perform live tonight. It will be a gay old time at the Kennedy Center June 22, when Thibaudet will play the Saint-Saëns fifth piano concerto (the exotic “Egyptian”) with the National Symphony Orchestra. When asked about his homosexuality, composer Camille Saint-Saëns (see sidebar) answered "I'm not gay, I'm a pederast"; at that time being gay (homosexual) was illegal, but a "pederast" was merely a man who practiced the Greek ideal of a grown man expressing love towards a young man. Go figure. The concert will open with Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite; Edvard Grieg had a major homosexual affair with Australian pianist/composer Percy Grainger (see sidebar). Young hottie conductor Krzysztof Urbanski (b. 1982 – I’m not kidding) will direct from the podium. While straight, it should be noted, however, that the Polish-born Urbanski is equipped with a  VERY long Mollard (photographic evidence below).