Antonio Iturrioz

Cuban-born American pianist Antonio Iturrioz, forced to play left-hand piano repertory after an injury, made use of his experiences in a documentary film, The Art of the Left Hand: A Brief History of Left Hand Piano Music. He has also specialized in the virtuoso music of Leopold Godowsky, who wrote a substantial body of work for the left hand alone. Iturrioz was born in Havana, Cuba, but moved to the U.S. with his family at the age of seven. He made his concert debut at nine, and when he was 15 he played the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, S. 124, in concert. His teachers included Julian White, Aube Tzerko, Bernardo Segall (a student of Liszt's student Alexander Siloti), Francisco de Hoyos, and his father, Pablo Iturrioz. He also took master classes with Byron Janis, played at the Aspen Music Festival in 1972, earned a Los Angeles Young Musicians Foundation Fellowship, and was chosen by André Watts to attend one of his seminars at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts. His career seemed off to a promising start, but just before joining Watts' seminar, he fell while jogging and injured his right hand. Iturrioz persisted with the seminar and with his recital schedule, but this worsened his symptoms, and in 1977 he was forced to drop out of the Van Cliburn Competition and undergo surgery. His right hand was out of commission for three years, but he made a virtue of necessity by studying a large proportion of the piano music for the left hand, including Godowsky's. He has been noted for directing The Art of the Left Hand (2006) and a second documentary, about Godowsky; the latter film was shown on the U.S. PBS television network and at the Portland (Oregon) International Piano Festival. Iturrioz has also appeared at the American College of Greece and at U.S. educational venues. Signed to the Steinway & Sons label, he released the album Gottschalk and Cuba, featuring music by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, in 2018.
© James Manheim /TiVo