Charles Rosen’s mother was an actress who also played the piano. The boy was a precocious child who was already playing the piano at the age of five; at seven, he played for Leopold Godowsky and was then enrolled at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. At the age of eleven Rosen studied with Moriz Rosenthal, and after Rosenthal’s death continued studying with Rosenthal’s wife, Hedwig Kanner-Rosenthal. At the same time he had lessons in theory and composition from Karl Weigl. Rosen studied music history at Princeton University, gaining his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1947 and his Master of Arts in 1949. In 1951 he received his Doctorate in Romance Languages. Always interested in a multiplicity of subjects, Rosen also studied mathematics, art, literature and philosophy.

The success of his New York debut recital earned Rosen a Fulbright Scholarship enabling him to study in Paris. On his return to America he taught for a short time at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but further successful concerts in New York led to a contract with Columbia Artists. Rosen has since pursued the career of performer, recording artist, writer and lecturer. His book The Classical Style (1972) has been a standard text for more than two generations and won him a National Book Award. His other main works are Sonata Forms (1980), and The Romantic Generation (1995) which originated as a series of lectures at Harvard University.

Rosen’s penetrating intellectual insights into music can give his performances a dry and academic air. His style is more suited to Bach and late Beethoven than Schumann, Chopin and Brahms; and he also plays twentieth-century repertoire by Pierre Boulez, Elliot Carter, Stravinsky, Bartók, Webern and Schoenberg. He gave the first performance of Elliot Carter’s Concerto for Piano and Harpsichord (1961) and was a co-commissioner of Carter’s Night Fantasies (1980). When he appeared at London’s Wigmore Hall in November 1956 he surprisingly began his recital with Feux follets from Liszt’s Études d’exécution transcendante, following it with Mazeppa, and although a critic found his performance of Schoenberg’s Suite Op. 25 ‘impressive’, he found the Liszt, as well as some Chopin and Beethoven, ‘…dry and emotionally limited. He is an interesting and accomplished pianist, all the same.’

Rosen’s debut in New York was apparently funded by an LP he made of Debussy’s complete études in 1951 for a small American label, R. E. Blake. It is often erroneously referred to as the first complete recording of Debussy’s études on disc, but this is not correct: the first complete recording of these études was recorded on 78rpm discs by Decca in a performance by pianist Adolph Hallis in February 1938.

In 1955 Rosen recorded a recital on the ‘Siena’piano, an instrument from 1800, and this has been reissued on compact disc. Another early recording, issued in 1960, and linked to Rosen’s interest in French poetry, was of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit and Le Tombeau de Couperin. Rosen has the technique for these works and gives impressive readings of them both.

Rosen recorded for CBS during the 1960s, and from this period come his most famous recordings. Bach’s ‘Goldberg’ Variations BWV 988 recorded in 1967 and issued in 1969 is still one of the most architecturally-constructed of recordings of this work, whilst his version of Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge BWV 1080, also from 1967, is close to perfection in its combination of intellectual insight and clarity of technique. The second pianist ‘Olsen Archers’ on some of the fugues is the anagrammatically pseudonymous Rosen. Between 1968 and 1970 Rosen recorded the last six piano sonatas by Beethoven; applying his usual analytical approach results in performances of great underlying structure and this is particularly effective in the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata Op. 106. Some of Rosen’s recordings of Webern have been reissued on compact disc, but to date, his 1972 LP of Boulez’s Piano Sonatas Nos 1 and 3 has not. Although this was entitled Boulez Piano Music Volume 1, no further volumes were in fact published.

In 1963 at the age of thirty-six Rosen recorded some Liszt, including Réminiscences de Don Juan and the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 10 for CBS, but later dropped this type of virtuosic repertoire. He had also recorded an LP in the mid-1960s of transcriptions by Moriz Rosenthal, Leopold Godowsky, Carl Tausig, Rachmaninov and Liszt. Rosen’s recordings of more Romantic and virtuosic music such as Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat and Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor Op. 21 can sound inflexible and dry. Although Rosen studied with Rosenthal, he certainly did not take upon himself the mantle of Rosenthal’s Chopin style. One of his better concerto recordings is of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major Op. 58. Made in EMI’s Studio 1 in 1978 with the Symphonica of London conducted by Wyn Morris, this recording captures a more realistic sound and contains some fine playing from the soloist.

During the late 1980s Rosen recorded for the Dutch company Globe. Discs of Schumann received unfavourable reviews, and even though Rosen provides the interest of using early editions and alternative versions of well known works, the piano sound is harsh and the playing at times unyielding. The best of the Globe recordings is of twenty-four of Chopin’s mazurkas. These are very different in interpretation from the performances of his teacher Rosenthal, with Rosen applying a type of rubato to the mazurkas that is not always wholly convincing.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — Jonathan Summers (A–Z of Pianists, Naxos 8.558107–10).