Steinway & Sons Remembers Frank Glazer

On January 13, about one month shy of his one-hundredth birthday, Steinway Artist Frank Glazer passed away in Brunswick, Maine. He was a longtime friend of the House of Steinway and a passionate champion of Steinway & Sons pianos. He will be greatly missed.

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Glazer studied music in Milwaukee public schools until after high school, when he traveled to Germany to study with Austrian classical pianist Artur Schnabel. Glazer made his New York debut in 1936, followed by a debut with the Boston Symphony in 1939. Then, throughout a remarkable career spanning eight decades, Glazer became known as a consummate pianist, an astute researcher of technique, and a dedicated teacher.

After Army service in World War II as an interpreter, Glazer studied anatomy and became invested in finding a relaxed, ergonomic method of playing that—he believed—would preserve his body’s strength and agility and thus lengthen his career. For the next seventy years, Glazer indeed performed with a speed and precision that stunned his contemporaries, even as he aged into his eighties and nineties.

Glazer taught piano at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, for fifteen years. Upon his retirement, he and his wife Ruth moved to Kezar Falls, Maine. Since 1980, Glazer was an Artist in Residence at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where he frequently gave recitals and often played concerti with the student orchestra, even into his later years. As recently as one memorable evening last fall, he played five full Beethoven Sonatas in one performance. In 2011, he received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Bates College.

In addition to his significant contributions to the piano world, Glazer also had strong ties to the Steinway family through his friendship with the company’s fifth president, Henry Ziegler Steinway.

"He was a personal friend and contemporary of my uncle, Henry Z. Steinway, and would have lunch with Hank any time he came through New York," said Edward Zinsser Walworth, the son of Henry’s sister-in-law Nancy Zinsser. (Nancy’s older sister Polly was Henry’s wife.) Walworth was a community member of the Bates College orchestra, and as such he played and performed with Glazer frequently over the last thirty years.

"Frank was ever the gentleman and was more than approachable by students and strangers alike," Walworth said. "He was a great raconteur and would entertain friends for hours with stories, some dating back to vaudeville theaters in Milwaukee and to his lessons with Artur Schnabel in Berlin. Fifty years after his debut concert at Town Hall in New York, he repeated the same program here at Bates."

"Into his hundredth year, Frank was always searching for the truth of any piece of music he played, and he knew it was his business to find it," said Dr. James Parakilas, Bates College Professor of Music. "He never took a vacation from practicing, and because he was so comfortable with his own mission, he could be endlessly generous to others."

Glazer had planned to celebrate his birthday with a series of concerts, including performances at Bates College and one in his native Wisconsin on what would have been his 100th birthday, February 19.

"Frank’s fingers and mind never aged, and it is obvious that music and the piano—need I say a Steinway—kept him going. How unfortunate that his heart gave out just short of his centennial," said Walworth.

"We mortals, too, are not insensitive to the best," Frank Glazer wrote on a signed photograph presented to Steinway & Sons in 2006. The House of Steinway mourns the loss of a great performer, artist, teacher, and friend. Glazer was a man passionately attached to the Steinway legacy; his loyalty and support will long be remembered.

Frank Glazer’s life and work are the subject of a comprehensive biography, The Fountain of Youth: the Artistry of Frank Glazer, written by internationally-renowned pianist Duncan J. Cumming, one of Glazer’s most dedicated students and a professor of piano at the University of Albany. Later this spring, there will be a commemorative concert at Bates College to honor the legacy of Frank Glazer.