Sad news: Austrian piano legend is dead

We have heard indirectly from his partner, Elisabeth, that Paul Badura-Skoda died last night, just short of his 92nd birthday.

Elisabeth gave the sad news to the pianist Didier Castell-Jacomin, for whom Paul, a renowned authority on classical-era repertoire, was writing a cadenza for the Haydn D-major concerto.

UPDATE: The news was made official at noon today.

A student of Edwin Fischer, Badura-Skoda became a sought-after soloist with Furtwängler, Karajan and Szell. He often performed on instruments from his own historic collection and was one of very few pianists to record the same works on historic and modern keyboards.

He edited the Mozart piano concertos with his wife Eva for the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe and was considered a paramount authority on Schubert. An amiable musician who shunned artificial rivalries, he worked happily with Jörg Demus (who died in April) on a study of the interpretation of the 32 sonatas. Together with Friedrich Gulda, Paul and Jörg re-established the authority of Austrian classical pianism in the modern era.