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Born: August 4, 1898 - Melbourne, Australia
Died: August 5, 1975 - London, England |
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The Australian-born English pianist and teacher, Max (Gabriel) Pirani, studied at the Melbourne Conservatory and later with Max Vogrich in New York.
In 1923 Max Pirani formed the Pirani Trio with the violinist Leila Doubleday (later Pirani) and the cellist Charles Hambourg. The trio toured widely in Europe, the Commonwealth, and the USA until 1940. In 1926 Pirani joined the faculty of the Royal Academy of Music in London. After several visits to Canada in the late 1930's, he served from 1941 to 1947 as director of the piano department of the Banff Centre for the Arts. He was a lecturer and recitalist in 1942-1944 at the Western Ontario Conservatory of Music (WOCM), and the founding director from 1945 to 1947 of the Music Teachers' College at the University of Western Ontario. His Canadian pupils included Dorothy Bee, Gordon K. Greene, Audrey Johannesen, Warren Mould, and John Searchfield. In 1948 he returned to England, thereafter publicising and developing the technique of Emanuel Moór and completing the definitive biography Emanuel Moor (London, 1959).
In Max Pirani's obituary in The Times (August 12, 1975) Sir Thomas Armstrong wrote: '[Pirani's] methods derived from the main-stream of European pianism... and they were always at the service of an exceptionally broad and discriminating musicianship.' |
