Alexis Sigismund Weissenberg was born in Sofia on 26 July 1929 to an Ashkenazi Jewish family and had his first lessons at three with the composer Pancho Vladigerov. In 1941 he and his mother, caught fleeing occupied Bulgaria, spent three months in a camp before a German guard who liked his Schubert on the accordion put them on a train to Istanbul. Juilliard, the Leventritt Prize and an American debut with Szell followed; after a decade’s withdrawal for study he re-emerged in 1966 with Karajan’s patronage, and died in Lugano on 8 January 2012.

Weissenberg’s playing divided critics like almost no other — steel fingers and a deliberate coolness that either thrilled or froze — which is exactly what makes his recordings essential to a comparison site: his Rachmaninoff Second with Karajan, his Bach Partitas and his Chopin are readings nobody mistakes for anyone else’s. Karajan called him one of the best pianists of the age.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Weissenberg
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q712128