Claude Frank died late last month. According to The New York Times, the acclaimed pianist and teacher died from complications from dementia. He was 89.
As a teacher, Claude Frank encouraged his students to explore the entire piano repertoire, including new and avant garde works. As a performer, Frank tended to focus on only a handful of composers, especially the music of Beethoven.
In 1970, Frank tackled the complete cycle of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas in a series of concerts, and a complete boxed set of records released by RCA.
Claude Frank was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1925, but the rise of the Third Reich forced the young pianist and his family to relocate first to Paris, and eventually to New York City. It was there that he began a ten-year mentorship with the renowned Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel.
In a 2008 interview, Frank said that Schnabel's uncompromising personality and thorough attention to detail made him a better pianist.
"His teaching was terribly meticulous," said Frank, "I'd bring in a Beethoven Sonata, and I knew I'd only get through a movement, if that. He'd sit at his upright piano, and he would demonstrate every note."
Frank made his New York recital debut in 1947. By the 1970s, he had an international career, playing with symphonies and chamber groups, and making dozens of critically acclaimed records. In later years, he joined his daughter, violinist Pamela Frank, for concerts and recordings.
Frank was also a dedicated teacher. He was a teacher at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music for decades, and was a professor of music at Yale University from 1964 to 2006.
Pianist Michael Mizrahi studied with Claude Frank at Yale in the early 2000s. He said that lessons with Frank went way beyond piano technique. "He had this saying that great music is better than it can be played. I always took that as quite inspirational, and maybe the greatest challenge that I would face in my life as a musician," said Mizrahi.
Claude Frank died at his home in Manhattan on December 27, three days after his 89th birthday.
