Ruth Slenczynska

Famous from an early age as a piano prodigy, Ruth Slenczynska weathered an arduous start by stepping away from the concert platform, putting her personal affairs in order, and returning as a seasoned performer. That the pressure from an exacting father left neither her determination nor her artistry impaired stands as an extraordinary tale, made even more striking by the fact that one of her most distinguished recordings appeared when she reached 75. Once she had laid to rest the shadows of a childhood she never had, Slenczynska earned enthusiastic critical notices on stage, produced a manual on keyboard method, and earned recognition as both a teacher and an artist-in-residence. In 2022, at the age of 97, she signed with Decca and released My Life in Music, a program that surveys her experiences as performer and pedagogue while tracing lifelong ties to the composers represented.

Slenczynska entered the world in Sacramento, California, on January 15, 1925. Her father, Josef Slenczynski, had established himself as a violinist and director of the Warsaw Conservatory until he sustained wounds while serving with American troops in World War I. Faced with a shattered livelihood, he decided to wed a woman willing to help him raise a prodigy; he found a Polish partner who accepted the arrangement, and the pair settled in California, which he judged offered the most favorable climate for such an endeavor. Within hours of Ruth’s arrival he judged her suited for either violin or piano, and from the age of three—by which point she already grasped elementary theory and harmony—he subjected her to a rigorous daily schedule of study and practice that delighted him with the evidence of her abilities.

By age four she had already committed numerous major piano works to memory and gave her first public recital at Mills College in Oakland on May 10, 1929. Six years old at the time of her European debut in Berlin, she stirred the audience to a frenzy and drew comparisons to Mozart; a similarly rapturous reception greeted her Paris recital the following year. Her New York debut in 1933 proved equally successful, drawing lavish admiration from Josef Hofmann for the depth of her musical insight. Throughout this period she worked with Hofmann as well as Artur Schnabel, Alfred Cortot, and Sergei Rachmaninov. The strain of her father’s oppressive discipline and the relentless schedule he imposed eventually produced a breakdown, prompting her to withdraw from performing in 1940 for a decade while she enrolled at the University of California. There she met fellow student George Born, eloped with him in 1944, graduated, and later taught at the College of Our Lady of Mercy in Burlingame, California. She reappeared on the concert stage in 1951 at the Carmel Bach Festival; two years afterward she and Born divorced.

In 1954 Slenczynska judged herself prepared to resume her career, this time at a sustainable tempo. Her best-selling autobiography, Forbidden Childhood, written with Louis Biancolli, appeared in 1957. A pedagogical volume, Music at Your Fingertips: Aspects of Pianoforte Technique, followed in 1961 and has remained in print. While maintaining a busy and fulfilling concert schedule, she joined the faculty of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in 1964 as artist-in-residence, a post she held until 1987 and continued thereafter on a part-time basis. In 1967 she married Dr. James Karr, a professor at S.I.U.E. Her 1999 recording of Schumann for Ivory Classics displays playing of great beauty and wisdom.

Slenczynska has remained active as both performer and private instructor into the twenty-first century. To mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 2020, during the coronavirus lockdowns, she recorded and posted video performances of the composer’s piano sonatas. The next year she appeared at the Polish embassy in New York for the International Chopin & Friends Festival. On the occasion of her 97th birthday in 2022, Decca announced a new contract with the celebrated pianist, who had previously recorded for the Decca Gold label in the 1950s and ’60s. My Life in Music, issued that same year, presented works by Rachmaninov, Chopin, Barber, and others.