About William Kapell

William Kapell was born in 1922 on the Upper East Side of New York City to parents of Spanish, Russian, and Polish descent. He showed both an early interest and great promise in music, particularly in the piano. His first teacher was Dorothea Anderson LaFollette. Six weeks after taking his first lesson, the young protege won a contest open to children studying in the city's settlement schools (the prize was a turkey dinner as a guest of Jose Iturbi). By 1934 he was playing recitals in private homes and small concert venues. During his senior year at Columbia Grammar School, Kapell was awarded a scholarship to study at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music under Mme. Olga Samaroff. After little more than a year of studies there he won the Philadelphia Orchestra's Youth Contest and subsequently appeared with that orchestra, performing the Saint-Sa�ns Concerto in G Minor in February, 1940. Later that year he was awarded a fellowship by the Juilliard Graduate School, where he continued his studies with Mme. Samaroff. While at Juilliard Kapell won the Walter W. Naumberg Musical Foundation Competition, which led to his Town Hall debut in October, 1941. The following year he was honored with the Town Hall Endowment Series Award, provided for an artist under 30 years of age who had presented the outstanding performance at the hall in the previous year. At the age of 19, Kapell was the youngest recipient in the program's history.

Kapell's career was fully launched in the summer of 1942, when Efrem Kurtz engaged him to play the recently composed piano concerto of Khachaturian with the New York Philharmonic at Lewisohn Stadium. He subsequently became known to some colleagues as "William Khachaturian Kapell" for the frequency with which he played the piece. His concert touring also began in 1942 and in 1944 the Philadelphia Orchestra signed him to an unprecedented three-year contract. Between 1945 and 1953 Kapell made tours of Australia and Europe twice, South America three times, and Israel once.

Though Kapell was best known during his earliest years for performances of the late 19th-century virtuoso repertoire, those who followed his career remarked on the enormous breadth of his repertoire, particularly as he matured from 1942 to 1953. He was single-minded in his devotion to excellence and truth in his music-making and worked with tremendous vigor to keep learning and continue improving.

Kapell had a strong interest in the music of his own time and was particularly devoted to Aaron Copland's piano works. As Copland once remarked, the young artist often chose thorny, difficult works to perform rather than more obvious crowd-pleasers. Works by American composers were featured in all his concerts abroad, for he felt a certain sense of mission in bringing these compositions to audiences around the world. William Kapell was returning from a tour of Australia on October 29th, 1953 when his plane tragically crashed upon descent into the San Francisco area, killing nineteen passengers in a fiery wreck. As those who were fortunate enough to know him will attest, the legacy he left behind is one of consummate artistry and commitment to music.