Pnina Salzman

Pnina Salzman (February 24, 1922, – December 16, 2006) was an internationally renowned pianist and teacher.

Biography

Pnina Salzman was born in Tel Aviv, in Mandated Palestine, to accountant Schmuel Salzman and kindergarten teacher Lea Salzman (née Kostelanetz). They owned a piano at a time when pianos in Palestine were very rare. Her parents struggled financially and Pnina had to work very hard to win scholarships.

In 1932, at the age of eight and while a student at Shulamit Conservatory with Lina Hopenko.

Alfred Denis Cortot, the French pianist, conductor, and teacher and one of the great pianists and teachers of his era, heard her play and invited her to Paris to study under him at the Ecole Normale de Musique - a rare invitation as she was the only child he ever taught. She and her brother were taken to Paris by her mother, under the patronage of Baron Édouard de Rothschild, and graduated at the age of 12. Cortot predicted a great future for her.

She graduated from the Ecole Normale de Musique and became a pupil of Magda Tagliaferro at the Conservatoire de Paris. At the age of 15, she memorised the Schuman and Shostakovich concerts in ten days. Her fame rapidly spread while she was still in Paris. When war broke out in 1939, she was about to be launched in London but her contract was cancelled and she returned to Palestine.

During her absence from her country of birth, Broneslaw Huberman, the world-famous violinist, founded one of the world's greatest orchestras, the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra, (later known as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra). It was composed of some of the world's greatest musicians, many of whom had fled Nazi Germany.

The famous conductor, Arturo Toscanini, went to Palestine especially to conduct this orchestra. Pnina Salzman was invited to be its solo pianist. She gave dozens of concerts with the orchestra throughout Palestine and the Middle East and she achieved great prominence.

During World War II, she regularly performed in Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine and gave recitals in South Africa (1944) and Australia (1945). During six-months in 1944, her concert tours included 65 solo and orchestral appearances.

In 1963 she became the first Israeli to be invited to play in the USSR and in 1994, became the first Israeli pianist to play in China.

Besides performing as a soloist, she was a member of the Israel Piano Quartet.

She was a Professor and the head of the piano department at Tel Aviv University and served on the jury of many piano competitions, including Vladimir Horowitz, Marguerite Long and the Paloma O'Shea Santander International Piano Competition.

She was on the jury of the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition from its inception in 1974 until her death.

She taught piano to many students, including Dror Elimelech, Nimrod David Pfeffer, Elisha Abas, Inbar Rothschild, Iddo Bar-Shai and Yossi Reshef.

She died in Tel Aviv, Israel, on December 16, 2006.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

In 1944, at the age of 21, Pnina Salzman came to South Africa and gave concerts. It has not yet been established exactly where her concerts were given, but one at least was given in the dining room of Parliament House, Cape Town, just before the 1944 April Easter Recess.

She also played in Johannesburg and after hearing her fourth concert, Cornet di Falsetto (presumably a pseudonym) wrote in the March 21, 1944, edition of Johannesburg Trek: "Only once more in my life has a young artist inspired me to such an exultant enthusiasm: Yehudi Menuhin.

"I have to say it after all: Pnina Salzman must be declared a pianistic genius. She can already today be counted as one of the five greatest pianists of our time, and surely as the very best, the most perfect, the most sincere, the profoundest, and most dexterous (technically) and the most clever (intellectually) of all living female pianists."

Awards, etc

In 1938, at the age of 16, while studying at the Conservatoire de Paris, she was awarded the Premier Prix de Piano.

In 1999, she was awarded the Frank Pelleg Prize by the Israeli Cultural Ministry. (Frank Pelleg was an Israeli composer who was born in 1910 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)

In 2006, Salzman was awarded the Israel Prize for music.