Abbey Simon was an American classical pianist. He was born in New York on January 8, 1920, and died in Geneva, Switzerland, on December 18, 2019. He came from the family of Solomon and Sarah Simon; his father was a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and his mother came from an immigrant family.
Simon began piano lessons at the age of five with the teacher David Saperton. At eight he was admitted to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where he studied alongside Jorge Bolet and Sidney Foster and received a scholarship. He further refined his art with masters such as Leopold Godowsky and Harold Bauer, though he acknowledged that the teacher Dora Zaslavsky opened his eyes to many areas of music. Immediately after completing his studies, he made his debut at Town Hall and Carnegie Hall in New York City. In 1940 he won the Naumburg Competition, which at that time strongly influenced the future of young performers in the United States.
That success began a career that lasted more than sixty years. Simon was recognized as a virtuoso and a master of piano playing. Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer described him as a brilliant virtuoso with exceptional technical polish, admiring his passages, double notes, and the refinement, ease, beauty, and clarity of his musical articulation. His strengths appeared most clearly in works by Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Ravel, many of which he recorded.
Among his notable recordings was one of the early discs made using the quadraphonic system, containing all of Chopin's works for piano and orchestra: both concertos, Andante spianato, Grande polonaise, the Fantasy, the Krakowiak, and the Variations. He also recorded works by Rachmaninoff, Brahms, and Schumann for Vox Records. Over time, the qualities associated with his playing—poetic feeling, musicality, and polished small-scale technique—did not fade, but became the defining marks of his subtle and precise professionalism. Critics also praised his recordings of the four Chopin scherzos and works by Ravel, while sometimes noting limitations in large-scale works such as concertos by Brahms or Rachmaninoff and Chopin sonatas.
Simon toured in Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific region. He appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra. His discography extended widely across the core piano repertory, including recordings of Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Ravel, Chopin, Grieg, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saëns, Dohnányi, Albéniz-Godowsky, César Franck, Beethoven, and collections of transcriptions by Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Godowsky, and Chasins.
In his later years he taught at numerous piano master classes, including at the Royal College of Music in London, the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and the conservatory in Geneva. He also served on the faculty of Indiana State University, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Juilliard School in New York. Among his students were pianists Frederick Chiu, Karen Shaw, Jon Kamitsuka, Erika Nickrenz, Richard Dowling, Roger Wright, Andrew Cooperstock, David Korevaar, and Martha Argerich.
Simon was also a long-standing jury member at major international piano competitions, including the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the Geneva International Piano Competition, the Leeds International Piano Competition, the Sydney International Piano Competition, and the international piano competition in South Africa. His awards included the Walter Naumburg Prize in 1940, the National Orchestra Award, the Federal Music Award, recognition from the Harriet Cohen International Music Award, the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal, a Ford Foundation award, and the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Moores School of Music.
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