NEW YORK.- Byron Janis, a renowned American concert pianist and composer who broke barriers as a cultural ambassador in the Cold War era and later overcame severe arthritis that nearly robbed him of his playing abilities, has died. He was 95 years old.
Janis died Thursday night in a New York City hospital, according to his wife, Maria Cooper Janis. In her statement, she described her husband as “an exceptional human being who took her talents to the highest peak.”
Janis, a child prodigy who studied with Vladimir Horowitz, established himself in the late 1940s as one of the most celebrated virtuosos of a new generation of talented American pianists.
In 1960, he was selected as the first musician to tour the then-Soviet Union as part of a cultural exchange program organized by the United States Department of State. His recitals of Chopin and Mozart astonished Russian audiences, and The New York Times described them as helping to break “the musical iron curtain.”
At age 45, he was diagnosed with a severe form of psoriatic arthritis in his hands and wrists. Janis kept her health problem a secret for more than a decade, and she often played the piano in excruciating pain.
“It was a life-or-death struggle every day for many years,” Janis later told the Chicago Tribune. “At every moment, I thought I wouldn’t be able to continue playing, and that terrified me. After all, music was my life, my world, my passion.”
He made his diagnosis known publicly after a concert at the White House when Ronald Reagan was president, in which it was announced that he would be a spokesperson for the Arthritis Foundation.
This health problem forced him to undergo several operations, and caused him to temporarily reduce his work pace. However, he was able to play the piano again after making adjustments to his playing technique, which reduced the pressure on his swollen fingers, and remained active until his last days.
Source: AP
