For World AIDS Day today, Stephen Hough posted on his Twitter feed today (click here) my upload of Villa’s jaw-dropping account of Rachmaninoff’s Second Sonata (click here for the recording), a private recording of a 1991 Bargemusic performance that was my own introduction to the pianist’s playing. It arrived on a cassette sent to me by International Piano Archives co-founder Gregor Benko about a month after the performance and within a year I was able to meet Villa in New York through Benko’s introduction. We would remain in regular contact until he died a few years later – I still have all the Christmas cards and signed programmes he sent me, and his cassettes – and in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of his passing this past April I prepared this detailed tribute on my website (click here). 

Here is a tribute to some of the great pianists lost to the scourge of AIDS, in chronological order of their deaths.

It was not widely known that Jorge Bolet died from complications due to AIDS but that is in fact the case (I was shown a copy of his death certificate by his friend Gregor Benko not long after his passing). A stupendous artist whose recognition came later in life, Bolet was both a poet and titanic virtuoso. Until Gregor Benko played me a cassette of the Cuban pianist playing a Chopin-Godowsky Etude that had been privately recorded after a master class, I had only been aware of his more poetic readings that were lacking in some fire. I still remember the sunlight shining through the window of his office as the most volcanic playing erupted from a portable cassette player, completely shattering my preconceptions of this artist. Here is another performance of Bolet in that same work, from a concert in Hamburg:

Natan Brand was a brilliant Israeli-American pianist who died 30 years ago this month, though the cause was not originally made public for the sake of his children and family. My colleague Bryan Crimp of the APR label produced the first CD tribute to the artist, which features stunning pianism; the second set a decade later was produced by my university-years friend in Montreal, Jean-Pascal Hamelin. I have since come to know Brand’s widow, who made a number of additional recordings available, including the video footage that I have uploaded on YouTube and featured on my website (click here). A previously unissued performance by the artist will soon be shared for the 30th anniversary of his death – for now, his truly impassioned concert performance of  Schumann’s Kreisleriana – a desert-island performance:

Joseph Villa was unknown to most piano fans at the time that he became known to me, and the fact that it was presumed he would not survive was truly challenging for me to process in my early 20s when Benko introduced me to his playing. Here he is in an utterly glorious 1989 concert performance of Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5. Villa plays with truly orchestral colours, voicing and layering lines with incredible dimension, without any harshness of tone and with phenomenal rhythmic vitality and subtlety of nuance. A staggering reading by one of the great unsung champions of the piano!

Spanish pianist Rafael Orozco perished in 1996 at the age of 50. His playing was featured in Ken Russell’s 1970 film about Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers, and he had an acclaimed international career. A marvellous exponent of Romantic music, he was also a master at the music of his native Spain, as this terrific film footage of the artist playing Albaicín by Albéniz demonstrates.

Youri Egorov was a stupendous pianist whose gifts were apparent at a very young age, his musical maturity and superb technique resulting in remarkable interpretations in a wide range of repertoire. His death in 1988 at the age of 33 in the midst of the AIDS crisis was a tragic loss to the musical world; it is a little-known fact that as his health worsened dramatically, he chose to have himself euthanized after a farewell gathering with friends.

A number of concert recordings have filled out a discography that was regrettably limited due to his early death (a detailed discography is among the wonderful publications available at a commemorative website – click here.) One recording of a work he did not record commercially that I find particularly alluring is the Shostakovich Sonata No.2. In contemporary music, Egorov was a master of playing with a sumptuous tonal palette, evocative pedal effects, and clarity of structure, without any harshness of sound. His reading of the third movement of this sonata is particularly remarkable for its evocative mood and how time seems to stand still: impeccable phrasing, discreet accenting and transparent voicing that highlight harmony and structure, and ravishing tone are among the hallmarks of his playing here.