Clifford Curzon
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Clifford Michael Curzon (May 18, 1907 - September 1, 1982) was a celebrated English pianist.
Born in London, Curzon studied at the Royal Academy of Music. His public debut was at a Prom in 1923 when he played a Bach triple concerto under Henry Wood. Between 1928 and 1930 he took further instruction from Artur Schnabel in Berlin. He then studied under Wanda Landowska and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He toured throughout Europe and the United States. Clifford Curzon was knighted in 1977.
In 1931 Curzon married the American harpsichordist and pianist, Lucille Wallace. The Curzons had no children of their own but when the great soprano Maria Cebotari died aged just 39, in Vienna in 1949, they adopted her two orphaned sons.
Curzon was particularly well known for his interpretations of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert. Even though he left a considerable recording legacy, his distaste for recordings was well known, and he very often prohibited the release to the public of records which he felt were not up to standard. In his earlier years he had been noted for his championing of modern music -- Lennox Berkeley's Piano Sonata is dedicated to him; later he tended to stick with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Austro-German repertoire.