Claude Frank, musician, music educator. Served to sergeant infantry United States Army, 1944-1946, European Theatre of Operations, PTO. Member of Century Association (New York ).
Background
Of Jewish ancestry, Frank was born in Nuremberg, Germany. His father emigrated to Brussels after the advent of the Third Reich, and the family eventually settled in Paris when Frank was 12. Frank subsequently began studies at the Paris Conservatoire, but in 1940, he and his mother escaped France by way of the Pyrenees and Lisbon, and settled in the United States of America.
Education
Frank studied with Artur Schnabel in New York, for whom he first played in Europe. He studied composition and conducting at Columbia University, where his teachers included Paul Dessau. At Tanglewood, he studied with Serge Koussevitzky.
Career
He also was a pupil of Maria Curcio. He became an American citizen in 1944 and served in the United States military, which interrupted his piano studies. He served on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music, and presented master classes at Yale University, Duke University, the University of Kansas, and the North Carolina School of the Arts among many others
He joined the piano faculty of the Yale School of Music in 1973.
Frank wrote his memoirs with co-author Hawley Roddick, The Music That Saved My Life: From Hitler"s Germany to the World"s Concert Stages. As part of the cultural events surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Frank performed alongside nine other celebrated pianists at "The Olympic Centenary Piano Extravaganza of China".
The couple had a daughter, the violinist Pamela Frank (born 1967), with whom Frank also appeared in recital, and who survives her father. The father-daughter team recorded the complete sonatas for violin and piano of Beethoven commercially.
Other commercial recordings by Frank included a complete set of the Beethoven piano sonatas, in the Beethoven bicentenary year of 1970, in parallel with a series of live concerts of the complete Beethoven sonatas.
Achievements
Membership
Served to sergeant infantry United States Army, 1944-1946, European Theatre of Operations, PTO. Member of Century Association (New York ).
Connections
Louis and Irma (Ehrlich) F. Married Lilian Margaret Kallir, August 29, 1959. 1 child, Pamela.