David Saperton

Saperton was born David Sapirstein in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 1889. He began the study of piano at the age of six, under the guidance of his grandfather, an internationally-known tenor and musician. Saperton's father, a graduate physician of the University of Pittsburgh, was also a basso of repute. Leopold Godowsky, later his father-in law, heard David as a child prodigy of eight. His principal teacher was German pianist and editor August Spanuth, who himself was a pupil of Carl Heymann and Joachim Raff at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. Spanuth was known as a music critic in New York City and later took a professorship at the Berlin Stern Conservatory. Saperton later appeared in a joint concert with Geraldine Farrar in Berlin, 1908. In 1909, he performed a large repertoire in 180 cities throughout Europe. Saperton also attended masterclasses of Ferruccio Busoni and may have had some lessons with Rafael Joseffy, himself a disciple of Franz Liszt. His debut was at New York's Metropolitan Opera House where he played Chopin's Concerto in E minor at the age of fifteen. He played a solo recital to critical acclaim a year later at Mendelssohn Hall. In 1912, he returned to New York where he played very successful recitals but failed to attract an impresario. In 1915 he played a series of six recitals at Aeolian Hall including major works by Szymanowski, Liszt, Brahms, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin and others. After appearing in all major American cities on a tour in 1917–1918, he withdrew into private life. Saperton married Godowsky's daughter, Vanita, sister of silent movie star Dagmar Godowsky, in 1924 and began to immerse himself in the study of his father-in-law's difficult piano works, including all the transcriptions. Godowsky also introduced Saperton to Josef Hofman and the Curtis Institute where he taught a number of famous pianists before he was fired. He shifted the emphasis of his career from performing to teaching and composition, remaining essentially a private teacher in New York where he died on July 5, 1970. Pianist Andrew Kraus who studied with Saperton in the last months of his life, writes: "Experiencing his playing in the intimacy of his studio was, for me, an initiation into a way of playing the piano that had been lost as well as an introduction to a genre of wonderfully beautiful and interesting music that had fallen out of fashion".

Recordings by Saperton fill in for some of the piano sequences with William Prince's character in the 1947 Hollywood movie Carnegie Hall.