Charles Rosen

pianist, writer

Charles Rosen was born in New York in 1927 and left The Juilliard School of Music at the age of eleven to study piano with Moritz Rosenthal, a pupil of Liszt. His New York debut in 1957 was followed in the same year by one of the first complete recordings of Debussys Etudes, which attracted high praise. Since then his career as a piano virtuoso has included many tours of the United States and Europe, playing with leading orchestras and giving recitals. He has made frequent appearances with the BBC and various European and American radio stations, and his television appearances include the presentation of two programmes on Beethovens last years for BBC TV. In September 1999 he broadcast Rosen on Chopin a series of programmes to mark the 150th anniversary of the composers death for BBC Radio 3. His performances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra have included the BBC Promenade Concert premiere of Elliott Carters Double Concerto, and the first performance of Boulezs Elats/Mutiples conducted by the composer. The holder of a doctorate in French Literature from Princeton University, Charles Rosen holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Cambridge and Durham. He was appointed to the Charles Eliot Norton Chair at Harvard for 1980/81; this Chair, established in 1925, is offered every year to an outstanding individual in one the arts, alternating between literature and music. In 1988 he was the George Eastman Visiting Professor at Oxford University, and he was Professor of Music and Social Thought at the University of Chicago between 1991 and 1996. He was recently appointed to the International Chair in Performance and Musicology at the Royal Northern College of Music for a period of three years.