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Menahem Pressler

Menahem Pressler holds the Dean Charles H. Webb Chair in Music at the Indiana University School of Music and is one of the most esteemed concert and chamber musicians today, with a distinguished career that spans nearly five decades. His launched his career at the age of 17, when he won first prize at the Debussy International Piano Competition in San Francisco. This led to his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Eugene Ormandy. Mr. Pressler has toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe ever since, and made his solo debut at Carnegie Hall just four years ago, at the age of 73.

In 1955 Mr. Pressler co-founded the Beaux Arts Trio, a collaboration that quickly propelled him to the front ranks of the world's best-known chamber musicians. His discography of more than 60 CDs includes recordings of most of the piano trio literature for Phillips Classics and a Beaux Arts recording of music by Turina and Granados that was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1998, also on the Phillips label. The Beaux Arts recording of the complete Haydn trios received Gramophone magazine's Record of the Year. Mr. Pressler has also recorded the complete piano quartets and quintets of Schumann and Dvorák with the Emerson Quartet, both for Deutsche Gramophone. The Beaux Arts Trio's most recent release is a recording of the Beethoven Piano Trios for Phillips Classics. Mr. Pressler has been awarded the Grand Prix du Disque on numerous occasions.

He was given the 1994 Service Award by Chamber Music America and the German Critics Ehrenurkunde award, and is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from Gramophone. Mr. Pressler was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and has been
a juror of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition since 1993.