For this week’s edition of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winning program Between the Keys, The Classical Network’s Artist-in-Residence Jed Distler pays tribute to the late Gary Graffman, who passed away December 27th 2025 at the age of 97.
Graffman first made his mark in the late 1940s as one of the most outstanding American pianists to emerge after World War II. When Graffman retreated from two-handed performances in the early 1980s due to the onset of focal dystonia, he began to champion music for the left hand, as well as commissioning new works for his use. As artistic director and president of The Curtis Institute, he taught and mentored many generations of pianists, including Lang Lang and Yuja Wang. Indeed, the late New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg called Graffman “the great architectural draftsman of contemporary pianists.”
We’ll hear Graffman in performances of Chopin’s Ballade No. 2, Schumann’s Piano Sonata No. 2, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Balakirev’s Islamey.
Tune in to Between the Keys, this Friday at 3:00 PM, with the rebroadcast Saturday at 6:00 PM, exclusively on The Classical Network and WWFM.org.
