Biography (read more)
Joseph Emil Villa was born on 9 August 1948 in Garfield, New Jersey. He made his first public appearance at the Juilliard School at the age of ten, and went on to study there with Sascha Gorodnitzki. In 1968 he won the Kosciuszko Foundation’s Chopin Competition, and in 1972 he gave his recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in New York with a programme devoted entirely to Liszt.
Alongside his solo work he appeared frequently as a partner to other artists, among them the soprano Jessye Norman and the violinist Eugene Fodor, and he reached a wider public through television, including CBC’s Camera Three and NBC’s Today Show. He also held a position at the University of Connecticut. One of his recordings was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque in 1978.
Villa died on 13 April 1995 at Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center in Greenwich Village, New York, of AIDS. He was 46.
Villa’s reputation rests on the Romantic repertory, and on Liszt above all: the all-Liszt Alice Tully Hall recital that introduced him to New York audiences in 1972 set the terms by which he was afterwards heard, and the Grand Prix du Disque awarded to one of his records in 1978 came from that same body of work. His Chopin playing had been recognised earlier still, with the Kosciuszko Foundation competition prize of 1968.
He was admired by musicians whose own careers had been built on the same repertory. Arthur Rubinstein, Claudio Arrau, Alicia de Larrocha and André Previn all spoke well of his playing, an endorsement from within the profession that carried further than his relatively small discography and short career might otherwise have allowed. His work as a collaborative pianist, with singers and with violinists, formed a substantial part of a career cut short at 46.
Sources: