Clifford Curzon

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Sir Clifford Michael Curzon (May 18, 1907 - September 1, 1982) was a celebrated English pianist.

Clifford Michael Siegenberg was born in London to Michael and Constance Mary Siegenberg (nee Young). The family soon after changed their name to Curzon. 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. In 1977 he was knighted.

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 Mozart and 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 his best 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.

His uncle was Albert Ketèlbey and he described his childhood to an interviewer on the BBC programme Desert Island Discs: 'Little Clifford was supposed to be in bed but he never was, he was out sitting on the landing, listening to my uncle playing through the well of the stairway of my father's old house, and so the first [pieces of] music I really heard were these immortal melodies of Ketèlbey.'