Biography
Rosalyn Tureck was born in Chicago, Illinois. The first of her teachers to recognize her special gifts for playing the music of Bach was the Javanese-born Dutch pianist Jan Chiapusso, who gave her twice-weekly lessons in Chicago from 1929 to 1931 and also introduced her to the sounds of exotic instruments and ensembles such as the Javanese gamelan. She continued her studies in Chicago with pianist and harpsichordist Gavin Williamson. Tureck then studied at the Juilliard School in New York, where one of her teachers was Leon Theremin. She made her debut at Carnegie Hall playing the electronic instrument invented by Theremin, the eponymously named theremin. Later in her career, she joined the faculty at Julliard as a teacher.
For a while she followed Wanda Landowska in playing Bach's keyboard music on a harpsichord but later returned to playing the piano. In 1970, Tureck performed in Boston for the Peabody Mason Concert series. She was an honorary fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford.
In a CBC radio special on Glenn Gould, the host told Tureck that Gould cited her as his "only" influence. She responded by saying she knew that she was an influence and that it was very kind of him to say so.
She died in New York in 2003 at age 88. Her scores and recordings were given to the Music Division and the Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, both divisions of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Read more about this topic: Rosalyn Tureck
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