Walter Gieseking
| Walter Gieseking | |
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| Born | November 5, 1895 |
| Died | 26 October 1956 (aged 60) |
| Nationality | French-born German |
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Walter Wilhelm Gieseking (5 November 1895 – 26 October 1956) was a French-born German pianist and composer.
Born in Lyon, France, the son of a German doctor and lepidopterist, Gieseking first started playing the piano at the age of four, but without formal instruction. His family travelled frequently and he was privately schooled.
From 1911 to early 1916, he studied at the Hanover Conservatory. There his mentor was the director Karl Leimer, with whom he later co-authored a piano method. He made his first appearance as a concert pianist in 1915, but was conscripted in 1916 and spent the remainder of World War I as a regimental bandsman. His first London piano recital took place in 1923, establishing an exceptional and lasting reputation.
During World War II Gieseking continued to reside in Germany, while continuing to concertize in Europe, and was accused of having collaborated with the Nazi Party. He was criticized for this by pianists Vladimir Horowitz, who, in the book Evenings with Horowitz, calls Gieseking a "supporter of the Nazi," and by Arthur Rubinstein who recounted in his book My Many Years a conversation with Gieseking in which alleges he said "I am a committed Nazi. Hitler is saving our country." Gieseking performed in front of Nazi cultural organizations such as the NS Kulturegemeinde and "expressed a desire to play for the Führer". Along with a number of other German artists, Gieseking was blacklisted during the initial postwar period. By January 1947, however, he had been cleared by the U.S. military government, enabling him to resume his career although his U.S. tour scheduled for January 1949 was cancelled owing to protests by organizations such as the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the American Veterans Committee. Although there had been other protests (in Australia and Peru, for example), his 1949 American tour was the only group of concerts actually cancelled due to the outcry. He continued to play in many other countries, and in 1953 he finally returned to the United States. His concert in Carnegie Hall was sold out and well received, and he was more popular than ever.
Because of his gifts — he had a natural technique, perfect pitch, and an abnormally acute faculty for memorization — Gieseking was able to master unfamiliar repertoire, however difficult, with relatively little practice. From his early instruction in the Leimer method, he usually studied new pieces away from the piano. It became well-known to the public, for instance, that he often committed new works to memory while traveling by train, ship or plane. Sometimes, according to Harold C. Schonberg's book The Great Pianists (1963), he could even learn an entire concerto by heart in one day.
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