Oldest ever concert duo has been cancelled
mainWe reported last week that Menahem Pressler, 95, and Paul Badura-Skoda, 91,were due to give a joint recital in Vienna next month.
With a combined age of 186 that would surely have been the most senior duo in music history.
Sadly, we have just been informed that Menahem has to pull out. Paul will play a solo recital instead.
Those young whippersnappers just can’t be trusted to make the gig !
Seriously, best wishes, Menahem, and go get ’em, Paul!
As SD has editorialized in another post today, it is an OUTRAGE — all of these conductors and other artists canceling at the last minute.
Musicians: think of how hard your audiences work to come to your performances — struggling through traffic and weather, and eating an early dinner. If we can show up, surely you can as well.
How old are you? 95? If so, bravo for showing up to anything, let alone the concerts, masterclasses, teaching this wonderful artist has achieved for 70 years of an impeccable career, never cancelling with his one concert with his Beaux Arts Trio in its 53 years of existence and once touring Australia in agony with cracked ribs! Shame on you for your thoughtless and ignorant remarks.
And for your further education it will do you no harm to read Norman’s post of January 2014 recounting how Pressler, then 90 battled the elements to show up for his concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic:
WHAT A PIANIST, 90, DOES WHEN HIS AIRPORT’S SNOWBOUND
By Norman Lebrecht
On January 11, 2014
Menahem Pressler was snowbound in Bloomington Indiana, with Indianapolis airport closed, when he had rehearsals the following day in Berlin with Semyon Bychkov and the Berlin Philharmonic.
What to do? He hired a 4-wheel drive jeep and asked a devoted student to drive him to Chicago. After a seven-hour drive, he found Homeland Security blocking the main roads in to Chicago.
Undeterred he took a side road without knowing where it would lead. He reached the airport and was delayed there for two hours by the plane’s de-icing. At Munich airport, his connecting flight to Berlin had gone and he had to wait hours more for the next connection to Berlin.
He arrived sleepless for rehearsals, played an immaculate Mozart Piano Concerto in G major K453 at the concert, received a standing ovation and encored with a Chopin Nocturne.
There is only one Menahem.
I think it was a joke…
SO RIGHT!!!! ONLY ONE. To watch him perform makes you the listener enjoy
the music AS MUCH AS HE DOES! We all know how much this pianist ENJOYS the work he does. Many Many more years to my favorite.