Michael Ponti was a German-American classical pianist.
17 Facts About Michael Ponti
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Michael Ponti was the first to record the complete piano works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin.
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Michael Ponti made more than 80 recordings, around 50 of rarely played concertos from the Romantic period, often the only recording of these works at the time.
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Michael Ponti played and recorded chamber music with his Ponti-Zimansky-Polasek Trio.
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Michael Ponti lived in the United States for most of his childhood and youth.
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Michael Ponti studied at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt until 1961, with Erich Flinsch who had been a pupil of and an assistant to Emil von Sauer.
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Michael Ponti took master classes with Arthur Rubinstein and Robert Casadesus.
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In 1964, Michael Ponti was a finalist of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, and won first prize in the Busoni Piano Competition in Italy, which opened the way to an international career.
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Michael Ponti toured extensively throughout Europe, Egypt, Japan and South America.
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Michael Ponti died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on 17 October 2022, aged 84.
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Michael Ponti began recording in 1961, Ravel's Jeux d'eau and Alborada del gracioso for Christophorus and Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy and Beethoven's Eroica Variations.
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Michael Ponti was noted for his wide-ranging recordings of the unknown romantic repertoire on the Vox and Candide labels.
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Michael Ponti recorded a series of concertos, many of which had never been recorded before, and some of which have been unrecorded since.
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Michael Ponti was the first to record Charles-Valentin Alkan's Concerto da camera No 2 in 1979.
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Michael Ponti included works by Eugen d'Albert, William Berwald, Alexander Glazunov, Hermann Goetz, Ferdinand Hiller, Henry Litolff, Sergei Lyapunov, Nikolai Medtner, Joachim Raff, Carl Reinecke, Anton Rubinstein, Xaver Scharwenka, Christian Sinding, Bernhard Stavenhagen and Karl Tausig.
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Michael Ponti was again first to record the complete piano music of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.
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Michael Ponti was the accompanist of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in a recording of songs by Charles Ives.