Leonard Pennario

Leonard Pennario ranked among the foremost American-born concert pianists throughout the twentieth century. His professional path opened at twelve when he substituted for an indisposed soloist in the Grieg Concerto in A minor during a 1936 appearance with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Shortly after entering the U.S. Army, he made his Carnegie Hall debut while wearing the uniform of an Army private, performing the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in November 1943. Upon completing his military service he encountered an enthusiastic welcome on the concert circuit. A Minneapolis reviewer captured the prevailing response by noting, "Pennario is endowed with temperament, interpretive imagination and the capacity to express it, above and beyond the flyingest ten fingers you ever saw. He made the concert one of the most exciting and exhilarating musical experiences in a long, long time." Comparable praise followed him from one city to the next as he maintained a steady schedule of engagements.

Rather than relocating to New York, as many emerging recitalists considered essential, Pennario remained anchored in Los Angeles for the duration of his career. Although he undertook his initial European tour in 1952, he focused his performances chiefly inside the continental United States and Hawaii. That geographic preference enabled enduring professional ties within the Los Angeles community, notably his friendship with composer Miklós Rózsa, who wrote both a piano concerto and the Piano Sonata (1948) expressly for him. Pennario likewise established a long-term connection with the Hollywood-based Capitol Records label, for which he continued to record across more than three decades. Among the more than sixty albums he produced for the company was his version of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra conducted by Felix Slatkin, one of the era's most successful classical releases on vinyl.

The collapse of Capitol's classical division in the early 1980s halted Pennario's recording activities yet left his concert reputation intact. In 1987 he appeared at Lincoln Center in a program televised on PBS to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Gershwin's death. By the 1990s he gradually withdrew from the stage, turning instead to his other notable pursuit as a champion bridge player. Throughout his career Pennario demonstrated comprehensive pianistic command and an instinctive grasp of musical substance; as one of his record producers observed, "Pennario is one of those artists who just 'gets' the music."