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Up for sale a VINTAGE! "Pianist" Igor Kipnis Hand Signed 3.25X4.75 B&W Photo.
ES-3896D
Igor Kipnis (September
27, 1930 – January 23, 2002) was a The son of Metropolitan Opera bass Alexander Kipnis, he was born in Berlin, where his father was
singing with the Berlin State Opera.
Although Jewish, the elder Kipnis was popular in Germany during Nazism's rise
to prominence. Employing the stratagem of a vocal injury, the elder Kipnis fled
Germany for Austria. When the Nazis annexed that country, the family was
touring Australia. From there they moved to the US in 1938. He learned the
piano with his maternal grandfather, Heniot Levy; attended the Westport
School of Music, and received his B.A. from Harvard University, where
he served as the program director of WHRB,
Harvard's undergraduate radio station. He studied harpsichord with Fernando Valenti, and made his concert debut in New York in 1959. He was an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa (Harvard,
1977), and in 1993 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters
by Illinois Wesleyan
University. Kipnis lived in Redding, Connecticut. For five years he
was president and artistic director of the Friends of Music of Fairfield
County, the Connecticut chamber music series, in addition to having served
thirteen years as co-artistic director of the Connecticut Early Music Festival.
Dr. Kipnis was also a member of the faculty of Fairfield University in the
early 1970s, teaching between tours. He married Judith Robison on January 6,
1953. Their son, Jeremy R. Kipnis, became a film and record producer. Igor and
Judith Kipnis divorced in May 1996, but reconciled shortly before her death on
March 1, 2001. He died in his home in Redding, Connecticut,
of renal cancer. His last
concert was a solo piano recital in October 2001, in San Francisco. Following
his debut in 1959, harpsichordist, fortepianist, duo-pianist, and clavichordist Kipnis performed in recital and as soloist
with orchestras throughout the world, including North, Central, and South
America, Western and Eastern Europe, Israel, and Australia. Igor Kipnis performed as harpsichord soloist with
the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago, Pittsburgh, St. Orchestra,
the Capella Cracoviensis,
the Boston Pops, the Munich Sinfonietta, the Los Angeles, St. Paul,
Cologne, Israel, New Stockholm, McGill, and Polish Chamber Orchestras,
the New York Chamber Symphony,
the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Sinfonia of Sydney, and the Academy of
St. Martin-in-the-Fields. His appearances at international and
domestic festivals included Bachwoche Ansbach, the Internationale
Bachakademie Stuttgart, and Ludwigsburg in Germany, the Bath Festival in Great Britain, Gulbenkian in Portugal, Lanaudière in Canada, the Israel Festival, the Melbourne International Festival of Organ
and Harpsichord, the Madeira Bach
Festival, Poland's Music in Old Crakow, the Indianapolis Early Music
Festival, and Prague
Spring International Music Festival. Kipnis's enormous harpsichord
repertoire encompassed not only the traditional 16th through the 18th Century
composers but also includes contemporary music and jazz as well. He is
especially noted for his entertaining concert-length presentation, The Light
and Lively Harpsichord, which samples the full range of the harpsichord
repertoire, from Bach to Brubeck, as well as for his informal mini-concerts whose
format he has extensively pioneered at college student centers throughout the
United States, and, additionally, for his performances and recordings on
related early keyboard instruments, the fortepiano and clavichord, and for directing ensembles from the keyboard. In
1995, he formed a duo with New York pianist Karen
Kushner, internationally performing works for (modern) piano, four
hands.