Wild About Earl

LAST month, Earl Wild celebrated his 90th birthday, with a recital in Carnegie Hall. Who’s Earl Wild? He is one of the outstanding piano virtuosos of the 20th century. A lanky Pittsburgher, with huge hands, Wild has a monster technique, capable of anything. He has always played the hardest music, the showiest music-but he is more than a technician. Wild has an interesting musical head. He is a throwback to an earlier time of unabashed Romanticism, and barnstorming pianism.

Born two years before America entered the First War, Wild studied with one of the great piano pedagogues of the age, Egon Petri, who in turn had been a student of Busoni. To review Wild’s biography is to touch history. He played with Mischa Elman, a violinist who now seems almost as distant as Paganini. He played in the NBC Orchestra under Toscanini. He pioneered Gershwin, that whippersnapper from Tin Pan Alley. He worked on television with Sid Caesar. Some people, with a wrong idea of sophistication, have sniffed at Wild, for this varied background (not to mention his old-fashioned repertoire). Wild has let them sniff: He has had a fun and fulfilling career.

About the Author

Jay Nordlinger

Jay Nordlinger was a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow at National Review Institute.

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LAST month, Earl Wild celebrated his 90th birthday, with a recital in Carnegie Hall. Who’s Earl Wild? He is one of the outstanding piano virtuosos of the 20th century. A lanky Pittsburgher, with huge hands, Wild has a monster technique, capable of anything. He has always played the hardest music, the showiest music-but he is more than a technician. Wild has an interesting musical head. He is a throwback to an earlier time of unabashed Romanticism, and barnstorming pianism.

Born two years before America entered the First War, Wild studied with one of the great piano pedagogues of the age, Egon Petri, who in turn had been a student of Busoni. To review Wild’s biography is to touch history. He played with Mischa Elman, a violinist who now seems almost as distant as Paganini. He played in the NBC Orchestra under Toscanini. He pioneered Gershwin, that whippersnapper from Tin Pan Alley. He worked on television with Sid Caesar. Some people, with a wrong idea of sophistication, have sniffed at Wild, for this varied background (not to mention his old-fashioned repertoire). Wild has let them sniff: He has had a fun and fulfilling career.