John Browning

John Browning (May 23, 1933 – January 26, 2003) was an American pianist known for his reserved, elegant style and sophisticated interpretations of Bach and Scarlatti and for his collaboration with the American composer Samuel Barber.

Biography Browning was born to musical parents in Denver, Colorado, in 1933. He studied piano from the age of three with his mother and, at the age of 10, was accepted as a student by Rosina Lhévinne. He appeared as a soloist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra later that same year.

In 1945, his family moved to Los Angeles, California. He spent two years at Occidental College there. He began his studies at the Juilliard School in New York City with Rosina Lhévinne in 1950. He won the Leventritt Competition in 1955 and made his professional orchestral debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1956. At this point his career came under the management of well known talent manager Herbert Barrett, later signing with Columbia Artists Management Inc. in the early 1990s.

As early as 1960, Browning had already emerged as a featured soloist in the prime-time CBS Television network special Spring Festival of Music. His appearance with the conductor Alfredo Antonini and the Symphony of the Air featured a virtuoso performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, which was noted for its musical excellence and its imaginative visual presentation on television.

In 1962, he gave the premiere of Samuel Barber's Pulitzer Prize-winning Piano Concerto, which was written for him, in connection with the opening of Lincoln Center. He subsequently made a commercial recording of the work for Columbia with George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. His second recording of the work, with Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1991 for RCA Victor, won a Grammy Award for best instrumental soloist with orchestra. In 1993, Browning won a second Grammy Award for best instrumental soloist without orchestra for a disc of Barber's solo works on MusicMasters. and MusicMasters Records. He can be seen and heard rehearsing a Brahms piano trio with Pinchas Zukerman and Ko Iwasaki, as well as chatting (in German) with Sviatoslav Richter, in the documentary Spoleto 1967 .