Famed pianist Gyorgy Sandor died of
heart failure in New York at age 93 on December 14. The Budapest
native who studied with Bartók and Kodály at the Liszt Academy of Music
died at home Friday.
Sandor started traveling as a concert
pianist in the 1930's and settled in the United States after his Carnegie
Hall debut in 1939. He recorded the complete solo piano works of
Prokofiev and Kodály, and the piano music and concertos of Bartók.
He was still touring worldwide after suffering a heart attack three years
ago and played his last concert in April in Turkey.
He taught at Southern Methodist
University from 1956 to 1961 and was the director of graduate studies in
piano at the University of Michigan until 1981. He joined the piano
faculty at the Juilliard School in 1982. In 1981, he wrote "On
Piano Playing: Motion, Sound and Expression" and recently completed a
manuscript about Bartók and his music.
He is survived by a son and two
stepdaughters.
(UPI)
György Sándor with Béla Bartók
