Virtuoso pianist Ruth Slenczynska, the last surviving student of Sergei Rachmaninoff, has died at the age of 101, after an extraordinary career that spanned nine decades.
Born in California to Polish parents, the musician gave her first recital at the age of four and debuted with a full orchestra in Paris at the age of seven.
Known for her impeccable technique and musical intuition, she played for five American presidents – even performing a Mozart four-hand duet with Harry Truman at the White House.
Slenczynska performed well into her 90s, releasing her last album in 2022. She died peacefully in an assisted care center in California, her former student Shelly Moorman-Stahlman said in a statement to the BBC.
"Tonight, heaven gained a very special angel," the musician and educator said, adding that Slenczynska's health had deteriorated after a series of falls.
During recent visits, “she was particularly energetic and mentally very clear,” and one day “she even played the piano,” Moorman-Stahlman recalls.
“Always a teacher, during a conversation about a recent orchestra performance, she 'assigned' me the task of learning Mozart's Concerto in A minor and bringing it to play for her the next time we visited.”
After another fall, however, she "passed away peacefully," surrounded by friends, including Moorman-Stahlman's husband, Randy.
Born in 1925, Slenczynska was declared one of the greatest musical child geniuses since Mozart.
A Pathé film chronicle, made when she was five years old, noted that the little girl had "stunned music critics with her interpretation of Beethoven."
Her concerts were “an electrifying experience,” wrote the New York Times in 1933, “something that nature has produced in one of her most generous moments.”
Her father, Josef Slenczynski, was a renowned violinist and director of the Warsaw Conservatory before being wounded during World War I.
After moving to America, he decided to raise a successful musician and considered his daughter a potential pianist or violinist just hours after her birth.
By the age of three she had already learned the basics of music theory and harmony. The family moved to Europe so she could study with the best teachers and meet the most important musicians of the time.
A tyrannical discipline
She met Rachmaninoff in 1934, after substituting for him at a concert.
“Mr. Rachmaninoff had to cancel the concert because of an elbow problem,” she later recalled. “The manager didn’t want to lose the ticket money, so he contacted my father to see if I could play the concert.”
A little later she was called to meet the master.
“I was a scared little girl at the door of his apartment in the Villa Majestic in Paris,” Slenczynska told NPR in 2022. “He pointed at me with his long finger and said, ‘Are you the one playing the piano?’”
The nine-year-old trembled with fear until Rachmaninoff sat her down next to him and showed her a picture of his speedboat, making engine-like noises to calm her down.
After she calmed down, she performed a virtuoso piece for him and immediately changed the key when he asked. They became lifelong friends, and she often wore a Fabergé egg pendant that he had given her.
In her early years she was also mentored by Josef Hoffman, Alfred Cortot, Egon Petri and Artur Schnabel.
However, her father's strict regime became unbearable.
“People were amazed at what I did on the piano for a very simple reason: my father made me practice nine hours a day, every day of the week,” she wrote in her 1957 autobiography, Forbidden Childhood.
At the age of 15, she abandoned her concert career, cut off all contact with her father, enrolled in psychology at the University of California, and ran away to marry a student, George Born.
The couple divorced in 1953, and to make ends meet, Slenczynska began giving piano lessons. She soon returned to the stage, ending an absence of more than a decade.
She then toured for four years with the Boston Pops Orchestra, where she also had an onstage rivalry with conductor Arthur Fiedler.
In 1961 she published the book "Music at Your Fingertips: Aspects of Pianoforte Technique," which is still in circulation, and then joined Southern Illinois University as an artist-in-residence and later as a lecturer.
A few years later she married for the second time, to Dr. James Kerr, a professor of political science. They remained together until his death in 2000.
She remained active throughout her life. During the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020, she posted home recordings of Beethoven sonatas on YouTube to mark the composer's 250th anniversary.
In 2022 she returned to Decca to record her final album, "My Life in Music", which included performances of Rachmaninoff, Bach and Debussy.
Among the recordings was Chopin's Prelude in F major, a tribute to her Polish roots and one of her favorite pieces.
“I had the honor of being with her during the recording,” Moorman-Stahlman said. “After a few rehearsals, she turned to me and said, ‘This is good. I want this to be played when I go to heaven.’”
Plans for the memorial ceremony and a concert in her honor will be announced in the coming days.
