Michael Ponti

He played and recorded chamber music with his Ponti-Zimansky-Polasek Trio.

• Name — Michael Ponti • Born — 29 October 1937 • Birthplace — Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden, Germany • Died — 17 October 2022 • Place of death — Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany • Education — Musikhochschule Frankfurt • Occupation — Classical pianist • Awards — Busoni Piano Competition

Ponti was born in Freiburg im Breisgau; his father was a U.S. diplomat, and his German mother later became an American citizen. He lived in the United States for most of his childhood and youth. While still attending school in Washington, D.C., he received piano lessons for ten years, seven of them with Gilmour McDonald, who had studied with Leopold Godowsky. At age eleven, he played both volumes of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in four recitals at the YMCA in Washington from memory. The family returned to Germany in 1955. Ponti studied at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt until 1961, with Erich Flinsch who had been a pupil of and an assistant to Emil von Sauer. He took master classes with Arthur Rubinstein and Robert Casadesus. In 1964, 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. Soon afterwards, he made his Vienna debut by performing Bartók's 2nd Piano Concerto, with Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting. For his official New York debut, he played a recital at the Alice Tully Hall in March 1972, and remembered: I started off with Beethoven Op. 2 No. 1, then the Tchaikovsky G major sonata, the three hardest Rachmaninov preludes including the big E minor, both books of Brahms-Paganini, the Scriabin G sharp minor sonata, Petrushka and then nine encores. I asked the audience to choose any one from a list of 54. I ended with Scriabin's 5th Sonata. It was midnight by the time we had all had enough. In 1976, Iain Hamilton composed a piano sonata for him. Ponti played with orchestras including the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and with conductors such as Sixten Ehrling, Stanisław Skrowaczewski and Georg Solti. He toured extensively throughout Europe, Egypt, Japan and South America. In 1974 he toured in Southern Africa and in 1977 in Australia. In 1977, he founded his own trio, with violinist Robert Zimansky and cellist Jan Polasek; they played for 20 years. In the late 1990s, a stroke left him without the use of his right hand and arm. Despite extensive rehabilitation, he was unable to return to regular performance or recording. However, he gave concerts of left-handed music for a while. Ponti died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on 17 October 2022, aged 84.