She is a prodigy who experienced her first hours of glory at the end of the 1920s in the United States, where she was born into a family of Polish immigrants. Ruth Slenczynska was 3 years old when she learned to play, 4 years old for her first performance, 6 years old for her first concert in Berlin, 11 years old when she played with a symphony orchestra in Paris.
And this weekend, to celebrate her 97th birthday, she announced the release of a new album on March 18 on Decca, My life in music, in French: My life in music.
Ruth Slenczynska, it is this child that the newspapers baptized in the Thirties “the most precocious pianist since Mozart”. But the glory hid a violent reality, which she told in her biography Prohibited childhood : the domination exercised by his father. Violinist at the Warsaw Conservatory in Poland, he decided at the birth of his daughter that she would be a pianist. The best, the most virtuoso.
He installs him behind a piano at 3 years old, and very quickly, imposes nine hours of piano per day on him. Everyday. Whatever its condition. No right to be tired, or to rub shoulders with other children. He locks him up, throws buckets of ice water at him in case of rebellion. In the largest concert halls in Europe, the spectators acclaimed her but at 15, stress and anxiety attacks got the better of her and forced her to leave the stage.
The teenager refuses to be a star, she decides to cut ties with her father and leave. She starts studying psychology, gets her diploma, gets married, builds her life by and for herself. But the piano is still there. Ruth Slenczynska likes to play, so in 1951, she joins the Boston orchestra, a musician among the musicians. Then she recorded her first albums, alongside a career as a teacher. Studies by Chopin, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, which she still performs today.
After 90 years of career, she could have had, like many pianists, osteoarthritis, memory loss, a more difficult reading of scores, but no, none of that, Ruth Slenczynska is fine, it’s hears, and she rejoices:A pianist of my age who is releasing a new album! It’s amazing, isn’t it?” launches to the BBC the youngest prodigy who has become the most capped, and undoubtedly, basically, the most at peace.