Gary Graffman (October 14, 1928 – December 27, 2025) was an American classical pianist, teacher and administrator. After he lost control of his right hand, he gave the UK premiere of Korngold's Piano Concerto for the left hand in 1985, and had seven left-hand works commissioned for him. He became a teacher, and later director and president, of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he had studied as a boy.
Life and career
Graffman was born in New York City on October 14, 1928, to Russian-Jewish parents. Having started piano at age 3, Graffman entered the Curtis Institute of Music at age 7 in 1936 as a piano student of Isabelle Vengerova. After graduating from Curtis in 1946, he made his professional solo debut with conductor Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Pianist
Upon graduation, Graffman played with numerous orchestras and performed concerts and recitals internationally. Over the next three decades, he toured and recorded extensively, performing solo and with orchestras around the globe. He revived the Tchaikovsky 2nd and 3rd Piano Concertos, recorded by CBS with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and several of his students play these works. In 1964, he recorded Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. He also made a classic recording of Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in 1966; it was reissued on CD as part of Sony Classical's "Great Performances" series in 2006. In the 1970s, Graffman appeared with the Guarneri Quartet and the Juilliard String Quartet in performances of chamber music.<!-- He also served on the piano faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. - no ref yet -->
Graffman's finger sprain may have been a trigger for focal dystonia, a neurological disorder that causes loss of function and uncontrollable curling in the fingers.
Later career
In 1981, Graffman published a memoir, I Really Should Be Practicing.<!-- and played it many times, but it later slipped from the repertoire.--> Seven left-hand works have been commissioned for Graffman. In 1993, for example, he performed the world premiere of Ned Rorem's Piano Concerto No. 4, written specifically for the left hand, on December 27, 2025, at the age of 97.
Honors
Graffman received honorary doctoral degrees (including from the Juilliard School, University of Pennsylvania, and Trinity College), was honored by the cities of Philadelphia and New York, and received the Governor's Arts Award by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Hilary Hahn, Teo Gheorghiu, Vitalij Kuprij, Stewart Goodyear, Claire Huangci, Daniel Hsu, Inna Heifetz, Valentin Schiedermair, Kuok-Wai Lio, Szuyu Su, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Di Wu, and Haochen Zhang.