Leonard Pennario
Encyclopedia
Leonard Pennario was an American
classical pianist
and composer
.
He was born in Buffalo, New York
, and grew up in Los Angeles
, attending Los Angeles High School
remaining in L.A. for his entire career. He first came to notice when he performed Edvard Grieg
's Piano Concerto
at age 12, with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
. The scheduled performer had fallen ill, and Pennario's piano playing had come to the attention of the conductor Eugene Goossens
, who recommended him as the soloist after being assured by Pennario that he knew the work. In fact, he had never seen the music or even heard it, but he learned it in a week.
He studied with Guy Maier
, Olga Steeb, and Isabelle Vengerova
and attended the University of Southern California
, where he studied composition with Ernst Toch
. World War II interrupted his career, and he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces in China, Burma and India, where his piano skills were soon realized and served well entertaining troops. He occasionally had to play around keys missing from the keyboards of the pianos at a couple of the more remote bases. He was discharged in 1946 as a staff sergeant and was awarded three Battle Stars. He had, however, made his debut, in uniform, with the New York Philharmonic
at Carnegie Hall
on November 17, 1943, with Artur Rodziński
, playing Liszt
's Piano Concerto No. 1
.
Shortly after Sergei Rachmaninoff
's death, the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos invited Leonard Pennario to be the soloist at a memorial concert, playing the Second Piano Concerto
with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra
. Pennario became the first pianist after the composer himself to record all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
. His recording of the Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto was used for the film September Affair
(1950), in which Joan Fontaine
plays a concert pianist preparing to play the concerto.
Beginning in the 1960s, he played in a renowned trio with the violinist Jascha Heifetz
and the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky
. Miklós Rózsa
wrote a piano concerto for Pennario, and he was the soloist in the first performance, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
and Zubin Mehta
.
Pennario recorded over 60 LPs, most of them of composers dating from Chopin
and later. He is perhaps best known for championing certain modern composers such as George Gershwin
, Rachmaninoff, Rózsa, Louis Moreau Gottschalk
, and Sergei Prokofiev
. In 1958, he was tied with Walter Gieseking
in terms of best-selling classical records involving the piano.
Pennario retired from active performance and recording in the 1990s. He wrote some pieces of his own, such as Midnight on the Cliffs, March of the Lunatics, and a 4-hand arrangement of Chopin's Minute Waltz
.
He was inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame in October 2007.
As well as being well represented in music encyclopedias, he was a Life Master in tournament bridge, and is listed in The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge
, most notably winning an Open Pairs event in China in 1991. He was once part of a celebrity foursome with Don Adams
, Les Brown
and Jack Benny
's daughter Joan Benny.
He died of complications from Parkinson's disease
on June 27, 2008 at the age of 83, in La Jolla, California
.
An authorized biography of Leonard Pennario is currently being written by Buffalo News music critic Mary Kunz Goldman.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
classical pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
.
He was born in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, and grew up in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, attending Los Angeles High School
Los Angeles High School
Los Angeles High School is the oldest public high school in the Southern California Region and in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Its colors are blue and white and the teams are called the Romans....
remaining in L.A. for his entire career. He first came to notice when he performed Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
's Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto (Grieg)
The Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, composed by Edvard Grieg in 1868, was the only concerto Grieg completed. It is one of his most popular works and among the most popular of all piano concerti.-Structure :The concerto is in three movements:...
at age 12, with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Dallas Symphony Orchestra
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra. It performs its concerts in the Meyerson Symphony Center in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, United States....
. The scheduled performer had fallen ill, and Pennario's piano playing had come to the attention of the conductor Eugene Goossens
Eugène Aynsley Goossens
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens was an English conductor and composer.-Biography:He was born in Camden Town, London, the son of the Belgian conductor and violinist Eugène Goossens and the grandson of the conductor Eugène Goossens...
, who recommended him as the soloist after being assured by Pennario that he knew the work. In fact, he had never seen the music or even heard it, but he learned it in a week.
He studied with Guy Maier
Guy Maier
Guy Maier was a noted American pianist, composer, arranger, teacher, and writer. From about 1919 to 1931, he was a member of the popular two-piano team of Maier and Pattison....
, Olga Steeb, and Isabelle Vengerova
Isabelle Vengerova
Isabelle Vengerova was a Russian, later American, pianist and music teacherShe was born Izabella Afanasyevna Vengerova , in Minsk . Her elder brother Semyon Vengerov was a venerable literary historian...
and attended the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, where he studied composition with Ernst Toch
Ernst Toch
Ernst Toch was a composer of classical music and film scores.- Biography :Toch, born in Leopoldstadt, Vienna, into the family of a humble Jewish leather dealer when the city was at its 19th-century cultural zenith, sought throughout his life to introduce new approaches to music...
. World War II interrupted his career, and he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces in China, Burma and India, where his piano skills were soon realized and served well entertaining troops. He occasionally had to play around keys missing from the keyboards of the pianos at a couple of the more remote bases. He was discharged in 1946 as a staff sergeant and was awarded three Battle Stars. He had, however, made his debut, in uniform, with the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
on November 17, 1943, with Artur Rodziński
Artur Rodzinski
Artur Rodziński was a Polish conductor of opera and symphonic music. He is especially noted for his tenures as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s.-Biography:...
, playing Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
's Piano Concerto No. 1
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Liszt)
Franz Liszt composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, S.124 over a 26-year period; the main themes date from 1830, while the final version dates 1849. The concerto consists of four movements, which are performed without breaks in between, and lasts approximately 20 minutes...
.
Shortly after Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
's death, the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos invited Leonard Pennario to be the soloist at a memorial concert, playing the Second Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900...
with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra
Minnesota Orchestra
The Minnesota Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.Emil Oberhoffer founded the orchestra as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1903, and it gave its first performance on November 5 of that year. In 1968 the orchestra changed to its name to the Minnesota Orchestra...
. Pennario became the first pianist after the composer himself to record all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in A minor, Op. 43 is a concertante work written by Sergei Rachmaninoff. It is written for solo piano and symphony orchestra, closely resembling a piano concerto. The work was written at Villa Senar, according to the score, from July 3 to August 18, 1934...
. His recording of the Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto was used for the film September Affair
September Affair
September Affair is a 1950 film, directed by William Dieterle, starring Joan Fontaine, Joseph Cotten and Jessica Tandy. It was produced by Hal B. Wallis.-Plot:...
(1950), in which Joan Fontaine
Joan Fontaine
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland , known professionally as Joan Fontaine, is a British American actress. She and her elder sister Olivia de Havilland are two of the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s....
plays a concert pianist preparing to play the concerto.
Beginning in the 1960s, he played in a renowned trio with the violinist Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz was a violinist, born in Vilnius, then Russian Empire, now Lithuania. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.- Early life :...
and the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky
Gregor Piatigorsky
Gregor Piatigorsky was a Russian-born American cellist.-Early life:...
. Miklós Rózsa
Miklós Rózsa
Miklós Rózsa was a Hungarian-born composer trained in Germany , and active in France , England , and the United States , with extensive sojourns in Italy from 1953...
wrote a piano concerto for Pennario, and he was the soloist in the first performance, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Los Angeles Philharmonic is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California, United States. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from July through September...
and Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.-Biography:...
.
Pennario recorded over 60 LPs, most of them of composers dating from Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
and later. He is perhaps best known for championing certain modern composers such as George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
, Rachmaninoff, Rózsa, Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works...
, and Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
. In 1958, he was tied with Walter Gieseking
Walter Gieseking
Walter Wilhelm Gieseking was a French-born German pianist and composer.-Biography: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...
in terms of best-selling classical records involving the piano.
Pennario retired from active performance and recording in the 1990s. He wrote some pieces of his own, such as Midnight on the Cliffs, March of the Lunatics, and a 4-hand arrangement of Chopin's Minute Waltz
Minute Waltz
The Waltz in D flat major, Op. 64, No. 1, popularly known as the Minute Waltz, and also Valse du petit chien, is a waltz for solo piano by Frédéric Chopin. It is dedicated to the Countess Delfina Potocka.-History:...
.
He was inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame in October 2007.
As well as being well represented in music encyclopedias, he was a Life Master in tournament bridge, and is listed in The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge
The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge
The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge presents comprehensive information on the card game contract bridge with limited information on related games and on playing cards...
, most notably winning an Open Pairs event in China in 1991. He was once part of a celebrity foursome with Don Adams
Don Adams
Don Adams was an American actor, comedian and director. In his five decades on television, he was best known as Maxwell Smart in the television situation comedy Get Smart , which he also sometimes directed and wrote. Adams won three consecutive Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Smart...
, Les Brown
Les Brown (bandleader)
Les Brown, Sr. and the Band of Renown are a big band that began in the late 1930s, initially as the group Les Brown and His Blue Devils that Brown led while a student at Duke University. He was the first president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences...
and Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
's daughter Joan Benny.
He died of complications from Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...
on June 27, 2008 at the age of 83, in La Jolla, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
An authorized biography of Leonard Pennario is currently being written by Buffalo News music critic Mary Kunz Goldman.