Charles Rosen’s latter-day reputation as one of the most erudite writers on music of his generation tends to overshadow his considerable accomplishments as a pianist. Born in Manhattan on May 5, 1927, to an architect father and an actress and pianist mother, Rosen started piano at four and was later enrolled at the Juilliard School of Music. He was exposed to the last bastions of Romantic pianism’s golden age through his teachers, the Theodor Leschetizky pupil Hedwig Kanner and her husband, Moriz Rosenthal, who had studied with Liszt.

‘I met Rosenthal because we had the same dentist,’ Rosen recalled when I interviewed him in 1997. ‘He never spoke about Liszt’s teaching methods, although I learnt a lot by just being around him.’ After earning his doctorate in French literature at Princeton University, Rosen taught French at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With positive critical acclaim for his early recordings and recitals, he was able to embark on a full-time career at the piano by his mid-twenties. Reviewing a recital he gave at New York’s Town Hall in 1953, Virgil Thomson wrote that Rosen was ‘at 26, one of the great piano technicians’, adding: ‘Under all the precocity lies a musical mind of great strength and modesty.’

‘A concert pianist ought to have the widest possible repertoire, although my old record company didn’t share that view’ – Charles Rosen

Notwithstanding his early exposure to pianists in the Romantic tradition, Rosen was very much a modernist, and he frequently cited the influence that Rudolf Serkin’s concerts had upon him. Likewise, Rosen approached Debussy in a less sensuous, more rhythmically incisive manner than did Walter Gieseking, whose interpretations were more iridescent, Impressionistic. Conversely, Rosen preferred the early, flamboyant Liszt of the First Concerto and the Paganini Études to the later, almost experimental pieces, citing the Liszt/Mozart Don Juan Fantasy’s unique qualities: ‘Nobody before Liszt had any idea of what could be done with sound alone, given any musical material,’ he told David Dubal. For Rosen, I suspect that Bartók represented the ultimate Romantic–modernist dichotomy. ‘It’s strange’, he told me, ‘how Bartók was a 20th-century composer, but a 19th-century pianist.’

According to Rosen, his writing career began ‘out of necessity’. Upon the release of his Chopin recital on CBS/Epic, Rosen found the ‘purple prose’ style of David Johnson’s sleeve notes appalling, particularly the sentence pertaining to the ending of the B major Nocturne, Op 62 No 1: ‘And the tiny coda staggers like a thing drunk with the odor of flowers.’ In 2011, Rosen told The Guardian: ‘I had many thoughts about the piece … That was not one of them. So I started writing the sleeve notes myself. People liked them and after a while a publisher took me to lunch.’

His first of many books, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (1971), remains a landmark in its field (it won America’s National Book Award for Arts and Letters in 1972, and was later reprinted in an expanded edition). Rosen’s prose style verbalises the music’s form and sound to a remarkably vivid degree. ‘He reacts to the music through the ear,’ wrote composer Ned Rorem, ‘and his words evoke not only the arch of a tune which, after all, must change according to the soprano or viola or bassoon emitting it, but those sensual vertical textures planned orchestrally by the composer. Moreover, he comes as close as anyone to entering the composer’s heart and head and uttering what the composer doesn’t “know”.’

Rosen’s acclaim as a writer led him back into academia. His 1995 book The Romantic Generation stems from a series of Charles Eliot Norton Lectures he gave at Harvard University. At the time of his death from cancer on December 9, 2012, he was emeritus professor of music and social thought at the University of Chicago. In a way, Rosen taught constantly. When I interviewed him, he answered my questions in the form of lengthy dissertations. He also hinted that his dinner parties (he was reportedly a fabulous cook) were lectures in disguise: ‘I annoy my friends by talking about what I’m going to write. I discuss it with them until I’ve finally talked it out. I then put my thoughts on paper very fast. I may make a lot of corrections, but I never do a second draft.’

The pianist proved similarly demonstrative at the keyboard as he tossed off from memory the six-voice Ricercar from Bach’s The Musical Offering, Mozart passages with and without ornamentation, and long stretches of Elliott Carter’s Night Fantasies (1980), which was written for him and three other pianists. ‘A concert pianist ought to have the widest possible repertoire,’ he told me, ‘although my old record company CBS/Epic didn’t share that view. Their idea was to record me for three or four years, and then do a big promotion. I recorded Ravel, Debussy, Liszt, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Schoenberg and Carter. When it was time to promote me, they didn’t know what to do: they couldn’t make me into a French, a Mozart or a contemporary pianist. Maybe that held me back in my career, but it certainly made life more interesting.’

Defining moments

1950-1 – First recordings

While still a student at Princeton, begins recording for Jack Skurnick’s independent label EMS, including works by Martinů and Mozart, plus highly acclaimed interpretation of Debussy’s Études

1961 – Collaborating with Stravinsky

Asked by Stravinsky to learn and record his Movements for piano and orchestra at short notice, as substitute for pianist Jesús María Sanromá

1969-70 – Recording with Boulez

Records Boulez’s Piano Sonata No 1 and the completed movements from Sonata No 3 in the presence of the composer

1972 – The Classical Style: a winner

First book wins US National Book Award for Arts and Letters and is reprinted in several languages; revised in 1997 with an additional chapter

1980 – University associations begin

Holds prestigious Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetry at Harvard University 1980-81. Later teaches at Oxford. 1986: becomes Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and Music, University of Chicago

1983 – Rediscovering Schumann

For Klaas Posthuma, records six ‘Revolutionary Masterpieces’ (9/86) by Schumann. Includes first known recording of C major Fantasia’s original ending (recently discovered at National Széchényi Library, Budapest)

1996 – Retirement

Marks retirement from University of Chicago in 1996 with three farewell concerts on successive nights in April. Repertoire includes Carter’s Night Fantasies, Beethoven’s Sonata No 31, Op 110, Brahms Piano Concerto No 1. 1999: presents Rosen on Chopin for BBC Radio 3 (three-part series commemorating sesquicentenary of Chopin’s death

This article originally appeared in the March 2022 issue of Gramophone. Never miss an issue – subscribe today