Arthur Gold | |
|---|---|
 Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, 1952 | |
| Born | February 6, 1917 |
| Died | January 3, 1990 (aged 72) |
| Resting place | Oakland Cemetery (Sag Harbor, New York)[1] |
| Education | Juilliard School |
Robert Fizdale | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 12, 1920 |
| Died | December 6, 1995 (aged 75) |
| Resting place | Oakland Cemetery (Sag Harbor, New York) |
| Education | Juilliard School |
Arthur Gold (6 February 1917 – 3 January 1990) andRobert Fizdale (12 April 1920 – 6 December 1995)[2] were an American two-piano ensemble; they were also authors and television cooking show hosts.
Gold and Fizdale met during their student years at theJuilliard School; where Gold was a pupil ofRosina Lhévinne and her husbandJosef and Fizdale was a pupil ofErnest Hutcheson.[2][3] They formed a lifelonggay partnership and shared interests in music (forming one of the most important piano duos of the 20th century),[4] travel, and cooking.
Gold and Fizdale made their professional debut in 1944 at theNew School for Social Research performing a program of 20th century music that included the world premieres ofJohn Cage’sA Book of Music (one of Cage's earliest experiments in using the prepared Piano) and Cage'sThree Dances (first version) for two prepared pianos, both composed for them.[2][5] This was the first of several commissions from American and French composers premièred by the piano duo in the second half of the 20th century. Some of the other composers from whom they commissioned works includeGeorges Auric,Samuel Barber,Howard Brubeck,Paul Bowles,Darius Milhaud,Francis Poulenc,Vittorio Rieti,Henri Sauguet,Germaine Tailleferre,Virgil Thomson, andNed Rorem.[2] In the field of jazz they have collaborated with Dave Brubeck.
Among their friends were American literary and cultural figures such asTruman Capote,James Schuyler,George Balanchine,Jerome Robbins, among others.[citation needed]
In 1948, they were part of the wave of American artists, musicians and writers who took advantage of the first possibility since the end of World War II to freely travel in Europe. They arrived in Paris with a letter of introduction fromMarcelle de Manziarly toGermaine Tailleferre ofLes six who invited them to a lunch withFrancis Poulenc andGeorges Auric. This lunch ended with Auric and Tailleferre taking the score of Thomson's "The Mother of Us All", which Thomson had given as a gift, turning it upside down on the piano and having Poulenc singing all of the roles (includingSusan B. Anthony) in nonsense English syllables which were supposedly an imitation ofGertrude Stein's Libretto while Tailleferre and Auric improvised a four-hands version of Thomson's score.[6]
Tailleferre invited the couple to her home in Grasse to spend two months while she was writing her balletParis-Magie and her operaIl était Un Petit Navire. She wrote two-piano versions of both works and gave them to the duo as a gift. These manuscripts were later donated to theLibrary of Congress after the death of Robert Fizdale. Tailleferre later dedicated two other works to Gold and Fizdale: herToccata for Two Pianos and herSonata for Two Pianos.[7]Francis Poulenc also wrote his ownSonata for Two Pianos for "the Boyz" (as he called them), a commission which was paid by their mutual friend the American Soprano and artspatronAlice Swanson Esty, according to Poulenc's correspondence.[citation needed]
The duo also recorded a number of recordings featuring works by Les six,Vittorio Rieti, and other composers, as well as a series of Concerto recordings withLeonard Bernstein and TheNew York Philharmonic, including the Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos, The Mozart Two Piano Concerto and Saint-Saëns's "Carnival of the Animals".
Bobby Fizdale was born Robert Fish, the son of John and Rose Fish of Chicago. Had a brother Walter.
Both Gold and Fizdale were of Russian Jewish descent.[8]
In the late 1970s, Arthur Gold began to have problems with his hands which made it difficult for him to perform, so the duo began to write biographical works, including "Misia: the Life ofMisia Sert" (Knopf; 1st edition January 12, 1980), and "The Divine Sarah: a Biography ofSarah Bernhardt" (Knopf 1991).
The duo also began writing food articles forVogue magazine and began a television cooking show. In 1984 they published "The Gold and Fizdale Cookbook" (Random House 1984), which is dedicated to their friendGeorge Balanchine, "In whose kitchen we spent many happy hours..."
In 1996, after the death of Fizdale, his estate donated the personal papers, recordings and other memorabilia to the Juilliard School, where they are kept in the school's Peter Jay Sharp Special Collections Room in the Juilliard Library[3] Gold and Fizdale are buried alongside each other atOakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor, New York.
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