Ignaz Friedman

Polish pianist and composer, born February 13, 1882 in Podgorze, Poland, died January 26, 1948 in Sydney, Australia.

One of the supreme virtuosi of his day, Friedman was the son of a musician. After receiving piano lessons in his home town, he studied composition with Hugo Riemann at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1900. He then went to Vienna where he studied piano with Theodore Leschetizky between 1901 and 1904. Starting in 1905, Friedman began to tour internationally. He made his home in Berlin, but when the First World War erupted in 1914, he moved to Copenhagen.

In 1920, he toured the United States for the first time (he would return 11 times), but only in 1923 did he made his first recordings for an American label, Columbia. In 1933 and 1936, while touring the United Kingdom, he recorded in London for Columbia and Columbia.

Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Friedman permanently settled in Australia after receiving an invitation from the Australian Broadcasting Commission to tour the country in 1940. He regularly performed and broadcast in Australia and New Zealand during the early 1940s. In 1943, however, a partial paralysis of his left hand forced him to retire in 1943. He died in Sydney in January 1948.