Earl Wild (November 26, 1915 – January 23, 2010) was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century known for his transcriptions of jazz and classical music. With the extraordinary catholicity of his repertoire, his role as a pianist-composer and his charismatic stage presence, Wild came closer than most to being the complete virtuoso. It is hard to name another pianist who has been as successful in the works of such a diverse range of composers, from Dieterich Buxtehude, Bach and Mozart through to Paul Hindemith, Walter Piston, Aaron Copland, Gian Carlo Menotti and Paul Creston.
Wild was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his father worked in the steel industry. His mother was a hat designer. With immense hands, absolute pitch and an uncanny facility as a sight-reader and improviser, from his earliest years he was certain that the piano was to be his life. His pianistic genealogy was distinguished. At 11, he was accepted as a pupil of Selmar Janson, himself a pupil of Scharwenka and d'Albert (who had studied with Liszt). Later he took lessons with the great Dutch pianist Egon Petri (a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni), Paul Doguereau (a pupil of Paderewski and Ravel) and Helene Barere, wife of the Russian virtuoso Simon Barere.
At 14, Wild was playing the piano and celesta in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Otto Klemperer. Times were hard as he began his career during the Depression, but in 1937 he became a staff pianist with NBC and two years later, he became the first pianist to give a live solo recital on US television. (Remarkably, in March 1997, he also became the first pianist to give a live solo recital on the internet.)
In 1942 Wild was the first American-born musician to be invited by Arturo Toscanini to appear with him (in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue), making him the youngest soloist ever engaged by the NBC Symphony. The broadcast performance brought national fame overnight and led to Wild being typecast as a Gershwin specialist. He later composed a Grand Fantasy on Porgy and Bess and Seven Virtuoso Etudes based on Gershwin songs.
Here's "Mephisto Polka" from above album.
After serving in the US navy band during the second world war (he played the flute), Wild took a job as staff pianist, conductor and composer with NBC's rival ABC network. He retained the post until 1968. Between 1952 and 1956, he worked with the comedian Sid Caesar on the hit TV show Caesar's Hour. During his affiliation with both networks, he continued to perform concert engagements all over the world.
In 1962, ABC commissioned him to compose an Easter oratorio, the first time a television network had subsidised a major musical work. Revelations, based on the visions of St John the Divine, was conducted by Wild with such success that it was restaged and rebroadcast two years later. Another choral work, The Turquoise Horse, based on a native north American poem, was premiered in 1976. His Variations on a Theme of Stephen Foster for Piano and Orchestra ("Doo-Dah" Variations) was given its world premiere in 1992. Wild was the soloist and claimed thereby to be the first virtuoso pianist-composer to perform his own piano concerto since Rachmaninov. In 2000 he premiered his Piano Sonata, its final toccata marked to be played "à la Ricky Martin".
He made his first recording in 1939 for RCA (accompanying the oboist Robert Bloom in a set of Handel sonatas) and subsequently recorded for 20 labels, including his own, Ivory Classics. His discography includes more than 35 concertos, 26 chamber works and more than 700 solo works. In 1997, his disc of transcriptions, Earl Wild – The Romantic Master, brought him a Grammy award.
His final public performance came in 2007 at Los Angeles' Disney Hall, when he was presented with the presidential medal of the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He was still giving classes a week before he died, in Palm Springs of congestive heart disease on January 23, 2010 at the age of 94.
Edited mainly from Jeremy Nicholas @ the Guardian