Biography (read more)
Artur Balsam was born in Warsaw on 8 February 1906, studied in Łódź and at the Berlin Hochschule under Artur Schnabel, and won the 1930 Berlin International Piano Competition and the Mendelssohn Prize the year after. A 1932 American tour with the young Yehudi Menuhin preceded exile from Nazism; settled in New York, he became the chamber partner and teacher of generations, dying there on 1 September 1994.
Balsam’s name is on an astonishing share of the mid-century chamber discography: sonata cycles with Milstein, Francescatti and Fuchs, complete Mozart and Haydn sonata surveys of his own, and decades of coaching at Manhattan School. His rows here are the sound of the collaborative tradition Schnabel’s school carried to America.
Sources: