All through music historical past, there have been many unbelievable youngsters who’ve demonstrated an astonishing, unnervingly early mastery of their artwork.
Some went on to turn into the best musicians of their age. Others have vanished from our collective reminiscences.
One factor all of them have in frequent is that the tales of their childhoods are all fascinating.
As we speak, we’re their backgrounds, their training, and the jaw-dropping accomplishments of among the best little one prodigies of all time. (Extra from The Biggest Little one Prodigies of All Time, Half 1).
Lili Boulanger
Lili Boulanger was born right into a musical household in Paris in 1893.
Her father was a seventy-seven 12 months outdated Paris Conservatoire professor who had received the celebrated Prix de Rome in composition in 1835. Her mom had additionally studied music; in actual fact, that’s how she met her husband. The couple had two daughters, Nadia and Lili.
Lili’s expertise grew to become apparent at an early age. When she was simply two years outdated, she started singing melodies that she heard. When she was 4, she started following her older sister Nadia to her courses on the Paris Conservatoire.
Quickly, Lili was learning piano, violin, cello, harp, and organ, in addition to music principle.
Sadly, Lili’s well being was all the time poor, and he or she often needed to step again from her formal research throughout her childhood. Throughout these instances, she continued working with Nadia.
In 1912, she tried to turn into the primary lady to win the Prix de Rome. To her frustration, sickness derailed the try. However she returned the next 12 months and received for her cantata Faust et Hélène. She was simply nineteen years outdated.
Tragically, her well being continued to say no into her twenties. She died within the spring of 1918, leaving a comparatively small output however a vastly impactful legacy behind.
Pepito Arriola
Pepito Arriola was born to a single mom in Ferrol, Spain, in 1895.
Sooner or later, when Pepito was two and a half years outdated, his mom performed a bit for him on the family piano. Later, she heard the identical piece coming from the piano room. Confused, she turned the nook and was shocked to search out her untrained toddler son enjoying the piece from reminiscence.
Arriola gave his first public efficiency ten days earlier than his third birthday. Later that month, he carried out in entrance of Spanish royalty, enjoying his personal compositions.
When he was three, nonetheless unable to learn or write language or music, he created his personal notation system. He would take clean sheets of paper and draw a logo on the prime indicating the piece’s style.
Arriola started touring internationally when he was only a boy.
Habanera by Pepito Arriola
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in Brünn, now generally known as Brno within the Czech Republic, within the spring of 1897.
His mom was an newbie singer, and his father, Julius, was a music critic. The musical couple named their son after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The center identify turned out to be prophetic.
Erich started displaying musical expertise from an early age. By the point he was 5, he and Julius have been enjoying four-hand piano duets collectively. He additionally started enjoying melodies he heard on the piano by ear. He was composing his first works by seven.
In 1909, Erich wrote a cantata that he dubbed Gold. Gustav Mahler, after trying it over, dubbed Erich a “musical genius.” He really useful non-public composition classes as a result of he’d already absorbed what would historically be taught at a conservatory.
In 1910, his ballet Der Schneemann (The Snowman), written a few years earlier for piano, was orchestrated by Alexander von Zemlinsky and produced by the Vienna Courtroom Opera, after Julius had despatched the rating to all method of musical celebrities. It grew to become a sensation. Erich was solely 13 years outdated!
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: “Der Schneemann”
The precocious triumphs continued. The primary work he orchestrated by himself was his Schauspiel-Ouvertüre, which appeared when he was fourteen.
Within the early 1910s, star pianist Arthur Schnabel went on tour with Erich’s lately accomplished second piano sonata.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Piano Sonata No. 2 Op. 2 (1910)
When he was seventeen, he got here out with not one, however two operas.
After the rise of the Nazis, Erich would flee Austria and search refuge in America, the place he helped to ascertain the nascent musical sound of Hollywood. It wasn’t the sort of profession path his bold father had envisioned, nevertheless it actually made him one of the culturally important composers of the 20 th century.
We wrote about Erich Korngold’s childhood.
Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz as a toddler
Jascha Heifetz was born in early 1901 in Vilnius, in present-day Lithuania, between Poland and Latvia.
His father, Reuven, was a violin instructor and an orchestral musician. When his son was a child, Reuven ran assessments to see if Jascha was in any respect musical. The outcomes have been promising, and earlier than his second birthday, Reuven was educating Jascha learn how to play the violin.
Jascha enrolled on the music college and made his orchestral debut at seven, enjoying the Mendelssohn concerto.
In 1910, he moved to St. Petersburg to review on the Conservatory. He would later be part of the storied studio of Leopold Auer and turn into his most well-known pupil.
He started performing internationally when he was nonetheless slightly boy. After one non-public efficiency, violinist Fritz Kreisler famously remarked, “We could as properly break our fiddles throughout our knees.”
In 1911, when he was simply ten, he performed an out of doors live performance in St. Petersburg to over 25,000 folks. The general public response was so frenzied that police needed to defend Jascha from the group.
He made his Berlin Philharmonic debut in 1914. Although he was simply 13, he impressed conductor Arthur Nikisch as the best violinist he’d ever heard.
Early recordings by Jascha Heifetz from 1917
When the Russian Revolution broke out, the Heifetz household traveled throughout the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco.
Jascha made his American debut in October 1917 at New York Metropolis’s Carnegie Corridor. It grew to become one of the legendary live shows in that venue’s storied historical past. He was simply sixteen years outdated.
He would go on to turn into one of many best-loved violinists of the 20 th century.
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin was born in April 1916 in New York Metropolis, one in every of three youngsters born to Moshe and Marutha Menuhin. Yehudi and his sisters all grew to become achieved musicians, however Yehudi would turn into probably the most well-known.
He started learning the violin when he was 4. His early lecturers included Louis Persinger, who would go on to show a number of well-known American soloists.
In 1925, Yehudi gave his first full-length recital, with Persinger on the piano. He made his orchestral debut with the San Francisco Symphony in 1926, simply earlier than leaving America to review in Europe.
By the late Twenties, he was making industrial recordings, once more with Louis Persinger showing on the piano. Recordings have been a comparatively new know-how on the time, they usually helped to unfold his fame internationally.
Yehudi Menuhin’s recording of the Satan’s Trill Sonata by Tartini, 1932
A number of days earlier than his thirteenth birthday, he made an astonishing debut on the Berlin Philharmonic, enjoying three concertos in a single live performance: Bach’s E-major violin concerto, the Beethoven concerto, and the Brahms concerto.
One critic described him:
There steps a fats little blond boy on the rostrum, and wins without delay all hearts as in an irresistibly ludicrous approach, like a penguin, he alternately locations one foot down, then the opposite. However wait: you’ll cease laughing when he places his bow to the violin to play Bach’s violin concerto in E main no.2.
He made his first concerto recording in 1931 when he was fifteen. The next 12 months, he teamed up with Edward Elgar to conduct a recording of his violin concerto.
“The best way that boy performs my concerto is superb,” Elgar wrote to fellow composer Frederick Delius.
Elgar’s violin concerto, performed by Elgar and performed by Menuhin, 1932
Ruth Slenczynska
Ruth was born on 15 January 1925 in Sacramento, California, to a Polish violinist named Joseph Slenczynska and his spouse.
Joseph Slenczynska was bitter that his personal performing profession by no means took off. However when it grew to become clear that his child daughter was musically gifted, he started residing vicariously by her.
He pressured her to apply the piano for hours a day, and if she didn’t, he chased her round their condominium with a stick.
When she was 4, the household returned to Europe so Ruth may research with one of the best lecturers. She carried out publicly for the primary time that 12 months and made her recital debut on the age of six. She made her orchestral debut at eleven in Paris.
At 9, she was requested to step in to play a recital when Sergei Rachmaninoff was indisposed. Astonishingly, she performed the identical program he had scheduled, with no repertoire substitutions.
Afterwards, she performed for him in a sort of casual lesson. (He soothed her nerves by imitating the sounds of his motorboat’s engines.) She’d work with him for 2 years. As of early 2025, she is taken into account to be the final Rachmaninoff pupil nonetheless residing.
When the Slencyznskas returned to the USA, she performed on the White Home for Harry Truman, who was an newbie pianist himself.
Meet 99-year-old pianist Ruth Slenczynska, Rachmaninoff’s final residing pupil | Traditional FM
Sadly, due largely to the immense strain she’d been positioned underneath as a toddler, she stepped away from piano enjoying when she was fifteen, and ran away from house. She acquired married for the primary time when she was nineteen.
Fortunately for listeners, Ruth would return to music in her maturity. We wrote extra about her extraordinary story right here: “Rachmaninoff’s Final Scholar: 98-Yr-Previous Pianist Ruth Slenczynska”.
Equipment Armstrong
Not all little one prodigies have been from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries! Equipment Armstrong, for example, was born in 1992 in Los Angeles, California. His mother and father had no specific curiosity in music and couldn’t clarify the place his ardour got here from.
When he was 5 years outdated, he taught himself learn how to compose by studying an encyclopedia. He started his formal research later that 12 months with lecturers Mark Sullivan and Michael Martin.
Armstrong’s skills as a toddler weren’t simply musical; they have been mental, too. When he was simply 9 years outdated, he enrolled at Utah State College to review science, math, and music.
He was accepted into the celebrated Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 2003, when he was eleven.
Equipment Armstrong enjoying Bach’s Prelude and Fugue, BWV 894
The next 12 months, he transferred to the Royal Academy of Music in London. On the similar time, he studied arithmetic at Imperial Faculty London. He would finally graduate with levels in each music and arithmetic.
In 2005, when he was 13, he started learning with piano legend Alfred Brendel.
We wrote an article concerning the teacher-student relationship between Alfred Brendel and Equipment Armstrong.
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