Donald Isler

Isler is the founder of the KASP Records label, which has produced fourteen CDs (as of 2021). Among them are his recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, as well as lesser known but significant works by Louis Spohr (1784–1859) and Artur Schnabel (1882–1951), such as the premiere recordings of Spohr's Piano Sonata in A-flat major Op. 125 and Schnabel's Dance Suite for Piano, as well as Schnabel's Seven Piano Pieces from 1947. Another CD with Donald Isler contains a recording of the important piano works of the American composer Louis Pelosi: 37 Canons, Inventions and Fugues. A DVD released by KASP contains the only known videotaped performance by Bruce Hungerford (with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4).

His CDs have been featured several times on the prestigious radio program "Reflections from the Keyboard" of NYPR's classical music station WQXR-FM, as well as on "The Piano Matters" of WWFM – The Classical Network. In 2017, he appeared on another WWFM program, "Between the Keys", where he was interviewed about his teacher, Bruce Hungerford, who died in a car accident. He has lectured on the music of Artur Schnabel at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival and at Mannes College of Music, wrote the foreword for a new edition of Schnabel's Dance Suite for Piano, and was interviewed about it on the blog "New York Pianist".

Donald Isler made his debut in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Joan and Sanford L. Weill Recital Hall) in 1980 performing Handel's Chaconne in G major, Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 10 in C major, Beethoven's Bagatelles Op. 126, Bártok's Romanian Folk Dances for piano, and Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58. He has gone on to perform at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York, at the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago, and many other concert halls in the United States, as well as in England. His concert appearances have been well received by critics, such as the April 22, 1986 concert of Schnabel's works and piano sonatas by Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven at Symphony Space in New York, performed as a tribute to Artur Schnabel.

Donald Isler (born January 14, 1952 in Paterson, New Jersey) is an American classical pianist and music educator based in Westchester County near New York.

Donald Isler grew up in New York in a music-loving family. Both his father Werner and his mother Charlotte, née Nussbaum, were good amateur pianists. His maternal grandfather was the conductor Manfred Nussbaum from Hammelburg in Germany, who in 1939 fled to the US, and after whom the Manfred Nussbaum Memorial Music Award at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School is named.