Background
Frager was born in Saint Louis, Missouri and studied with Carl Friedberg in New York City from 1949 until Friedberg"s death in 1955.
Frager was born in Saint Louis, Missouri and studied with Carl Friedberg in New York City from 1949 until Friedberg"s death in 1955.
In 1957 he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University with a major in Russian.
He made his Carnegie Hall debut in November 1960, performing Prokofiev"s Piano Sonata Number. 6. His Grammy-nominated debut recording with Radio Corporation of America Victor Red Seal was Prokofiev"s Piano Concerto Number. 2 in G minor, Operation 16 and Haydn"s Sonata Number.
35 in East-flat.
He recorded music by Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms and Prokofiev. Frager regularly programmed the two piano concertos and numerous solo works by Carl Maria von Weber, as well as the keyboard compositions of C. P. East. Bach. Frager"s personal library is now housed at the Sibley Library Special Collections at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New New York
His discovery of manuscripts includes a version of the Fantasie in A minor that later became the first movement of the Piano Concerto in A minor by Schumann.
He premiered this with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf at the Tanglewood Festival in August 1968. He also unearthed and performed the original version of Tchaikovsky"s Piano Concerto Number.
1, which Nikolai Rubinstein had criticised so unmercifully as to cause the composer to withdraw the intended dedication to him. In 1978 Frager visited the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow, Poland where he persuaded librarians to make available a cache of more than one thousand original manuscripts missing (and believed lost) since World World War World War II The collection included pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Schumann and Mozart.
In 1987 Frager received the Golden Mozart Pin from the International Mozart Foundation in Salzburg.
Although his family was originally Jewish, Frager was a Christian Scientist. He died in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on June 20, 1991. His family declined to state the cause of death, but he was reported to have been ill for about a year.