<\/p>
A c<\/span>omfortable retirement, free of work and with acres of leisure time available. Something we all aspire to, right? Not quite, it seems, especially if you happen to be a classical musician. Composers have a particularly difficult time packing away their manuscript paper. Rossini and Verdi both tried but failed, the latter returning in his 70s to write Otello<\/i> and Falstaff<\/i>. Performers can also find it hard to step away from the \u2018garish lights\u2019 (Dickens\u2019s coinage) of the concert platform, and it\u2019s not rare to see sprightly young 70- or 80-somethings stepping onto the stage. <\/span><\/p>\n Some press on even further, still working enthusiastically into their 90s \u2013 such as pianist Ruth Slenczynska who, at 97, has just recorded a new album for Deccca. Here, then, are 15 of Slenczynska\u2019s fellow nonagenarians for whom the buzz of creativity is too pleasurable to relinquish.<\/span><\/p>\n Who is the most dynamic Beethoven<\/strong><\/a> conductor alive today? The<\/i> New Yorker<\/i> recently cast its vote for the 94-year-old Herbert Blomstedt, citing a performance of the Seventh Symphony<\/a><\/strong> with \u2018a frothing energy that bordered on animal joy\u2019. Where does the Swedish musician acquire his vim and vigour? Being teetotal and a lifelong non-smoker possibly helps. But mainly it\u2019s being \u2018hopelessly in love with music\u2019 that spurs him on. Chicago, Leipzig, Vienna, Berlin and London are all on his calling-card in the next few months. Quite the lead-in to July\u2019s 95th birthday celebrations.<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike Blomstedt, the Spanish cellist Pablo Casals loved smoking, sometimes playing with a pipe in his mouth. His performing career spanned an incredible 84 years, including recitals for Queen Victoria and in John F Kennedy\u2019s White House. Also a composer and conductor, at 94 years old he led his Himne a les Nacions Unides<\/i> at the UN General Assembly, and continued playing until shortly before his death two years later. \u2018Be young all your life,\u2019 he advised. \u2018And say things to the world that are true.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Segovia was also a keen pipe smoker. More importantly, he revolutionised perceptions of the guitar, establishing it as a \u2018serious\u2019 classical instrument. The Spaniard performed well into his nineties, although results could be unpredictable. \u2018The legendary fingers would obey him only intermittently,\u2019 one reviewer wrote of a 1984 concert. But Segovia carried on until he was 94, defying poor eyesight and increasing physical frailty. Why? \u2018I will have an eternity to rest,\u2019 he retorted.<\/span><\/p>\n Over half a century, Menahem Pressler\u2019s Beaux Arts Trio acquired iconic status, and when it finally disbanded in 2008 the German pianist might easily have slipped quietly into a well-earned retirement. Not a bit of it. At 84, he relaunched his career as a solo pianist. Aged 90, he made a belated debut with the Berlin Philharmonic and recorded CDs of Mozart and Debussy<\/a><\/strong>. Even life-saving surgery in 2015 couldn\u2019t stop him. \u2018Still I\u00a0think about what I have done, what I could do,\u2019 he says. \u2018And what I will <\/i>do.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Similar thoughts are in Scottish composer Thea Musgrave<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s mind as she approaches her 94th birthday. Not content with ten operas already in the bag, she\u2019s working on an eleventh \u2013 Orlando<\/i>, based on Virginia Woolf\u2019s novel. Three hours every morning, seven days a week, is her schedule. \u2018During the lockdown it has kept me sane,\u2019 she says. \u2018I have my imagination, which can go where it wants.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Musgrave has for many years lived in the US, where Mr and Mrs Elliott Carter were frequent dinner companions. A king of compositional longevity, Carter wrote his first opera at 90, and its title \u2013 What Next?<\/i> \u2013 was clearly a question he was still asking himself on a daily basis. He went on to publish 60 more pieces before his death in 2012, aged 103. He knew some found his music \u2018difficult\u2019, but it kept on drawing admirers. \u2018I\u2019ll be damned if I know why I write all that music that people like,\u2019 he said. \u2018That some<\/i> people like, anyhow.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Keep going\u2019 was the advice given to Carter\u2019s fellow US composer George Walker by his teacher Nadia Boulanger. He needed it. His career as a pianist was seriously impeded \u2018because I was black\u2019, and it was difficult to get his own music programmed. Nevertheless he persisted, eventually winning a Pulitzer Prize for his Lilacs <\/i>in 1996. \u2018I strongly felt if I continued to press for what I hoped to achieve, I\u00a0would achieve it,\u2019 he once said. He wrote his last work in 2016, aged 94.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1927, Havergal Brian added the final touches to his vast Symphony No. 1, \u2018The Gothic\u2019. So huge were its demands, however, that the work did not receive its professional debut until 1966, eight months after the English composer had celebrated his 90th birthday. Even at that age, he had by no means finished writing symphonies \u2013 of his total of 32, seven were yet to be written. An often cantankerous type, his doggedness nonetheless attracted fervent followers. Not many composers, one writer commented, could claim to have been writing \u2018at the same time as both Brahms and Elton John\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n When Stokowski conducted the premiere of Brian\u2019s 28th Symphony in 1973, it was probably the first ever example of \u2018a 91-year-old conductor learning a new work by a 91-year-old composer\u2019, as one observer put it. The London-born Stokowski had sealed his fame in the US, conducting the soundtrack for Disney\u2019s Fantasia<\/i>. Aged 90, he returned to England, showing an undimmed appetite for performing and, as The<\/i> Guardian <\/i>reported, \u2018conveying his fire, his authority with the urgency of a man half a century younger\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n Like Stokowski, Neville Marriner conducted a best-selling movie soundtrack (1984\u2019s Amadeus<\/i>), and performed into his nineties. As an orchestral violinist he played under legendary maestros such as Furtw\u00e4ngler, Monteux and Toscanini before he started \u2018twitching around\u2019 on the podium himself. In his trademark turtleneck pullover, he proved a hugely successful \u2018twitcher\u2019, making more records with his Academy of St Martin in the Fields than any other conductor-orchestra partnership. He disliked high-falutin descriptions of conducting, describing it as \u2018not very difficult\u2019. No wonder, then, that \u2018Follow the beat\u2019 was his chosen epitaph.<\/span><\/p>\n Fanny Waterman, by contrast, was more used to people following her beat. An acclaimed pianist in early life, in 1961 she founded the Leeds International Piano Competition, building it into one of classical music\u2019s most prestigious competitions. Her energy and can-do attitude were legendary. \u2018They call me Field Marshal Fanny,\u2019 she said. \u2018I am a busy breeches.\u2019 Waterman left \u2018The Leeds\u2019 aged 95, later claiming she\u2019d been forced out by management: \u2018I didn\u2019t think it was the right time. I wanted to be there forever.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n In 1972, the Polish pianist Mieczys\u0142aw Horszowski phoned Fanny Waterman to tell her that his pupil Murray Perahia would win that year\u2019s Leeds competition. Perahia did. Horszowski himself spent an incredible nine decades performing in public, being \u2018one of the outstanding cases where a child prodigy grew unflaggingly into a great musician\u2019, \u2018According to the rules I should be dead by now,\u2019 said Ivry Gitlis on turning 90. \u2018But I don\u2019t feel like it!\u2019 The Israeli violinist was a free spirit, as happy collaborating with Yoko Ono, St\u00e9phane Grappelli and Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut as he was on a conventional recital platform. Even confinement to a wheelchair couldn\u2019t stop him playing. Aged 96, he was pushed onstage in Tel Aviv by conductor Zubin Mehta and performed for half an hour with pianist Martha Argerich. It was one of his last appearances.<\/span><\/p>\n 1<\/span>4<\/span>Al Gallodoro<\/span><\/p>\n Saxophonist and clarinettist Al Gallodoro was a kindred crossover spirit. He started as a jazzman in Paul Whiteman\u2019s orchestra and claimed he\u2019d performed the famous clarinet glissando launching Gershwin\u2019s Rhapsody in Blue<\/i> over 10,000 times in his career. He also had classical chops aplenty, playing bass clarinet in Toscanini\u2019s famed NBC Symphony Orchestra. Described by bandleader Jimmy Dorsey as \u2018the best sax player who ever lived\u2019, Gallodoro gave his last concert just two weeks before he died, aged 95, in 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n Pianist Earl Wild had Gershwin<\/a><\/strong> connections too. He played Rhapsody in Blue <\/i><\/a><\/strong>under <\/i>Toscanini,<\/a><\/strong> and composed elaborate keyboard pieces based on his fellow American\u2019s music. But it\u2019s as a \u2018super-virtuoso in the Horowitz class\u2019 that he is best remembered, excelling in Liszt and Rachmaninov. Quadruple-bypass surgery threatened to end his career in 2004, but a year later he bounced back in an acclaimed Carnegie Hall recital three days after his 90th birthday. \u2018After I had my operation I decided I wasn\u2019t going to stop playing,\u2019 he said. \u2018Why live if you can\u2019t play when you\u2019ve done it all your life?\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Illustration: <\/span>David Lyttleton<\/span><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Terry Blain Published: Tuesday, 31 May 2022 at 12:00 am A comfortable retirement, free of work and with acres of leisure time available. Something we all aspire to, right? Not quite, it seems, especially if you happen to be a classical musician. Composers have a particularly difficult time packing away their manuscript paper. Rossini […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":15873,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"7"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/05\/15-musicians-who-kept-playing-into-their-90s.png",1026,890,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/05\/15-musicians-who-kept-playing-into-their-90s-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/05\/15-musicians-who-kept-playing-into-their-90s-300x260.png",300,260,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/05\/15-musicians-who-kept-playing-into-their-90s-768x666.png",768,666,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/05\/15-musicians-who-kept-playing-into-their-90s-1024x888.png",800,694,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/05\/15-musicians-who-kept-playing-into-their-90s.png",1026,890,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/05\/15-musicians-who-kept-playing-into-their-90s.png",1026,890,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Terry Blain Published: Tuesday, 31 May 2022 at 12:00 am A comfortable retirement, free of work and with acres of leisure time available. Something we all aspire to, right? Not quite, it seems, especially if you happen to be a classical musician. Composers have a particularly difficult time packing away their manuscript paper. Rossini…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/15872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Which musicians kept playing well into their 90s?<\/h2>\n
1 <\/span>Herbert Blomstedt<\/span><\/h3>\n
2 <\/span>Pablo Casals<\/span><\/h3>\n
3 <\/span>Andr\u00e9s Segovia<\/span><\/h3>\n
4 <\/span>Menahem Pressler<\/span><\/h3>\n
5 <\/span>Thea Musgrave <\/span><\/h3>\n
6 <\/span>Elliott Carter<\/span><\/h3>\n
7 <\/span>George Walker<\/span><\/h3>\n
8 <\/span>Havergal Brian<\/span><\/h3>\n
9 <\/span>Leopold Stokowski<\/span><\/h3>\n
1<\/span>0 <\/span>Neville Marriner<\/span><\/h3>\n
1<\/span>1 <\/span>Fanny Waterman<\/span><\/h3>\n
1<\/span>2 <\/span>Mieczys\u0142aw Horszowski<\/span><\/h3>\n
1<\/span>3 <\/span>Ivry Gitlis<\/span><\/h3>\n
1<\/span>5 <\/span>Earl Wild<\/span><\/h3>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"