Peter Schmalfuss

The foregoing derives mostly from a biographical sketch by Robert Cummings on the allmusic.com Web site [2] with some additional information from a brief biographical note printed in the booklet for Schmalfuss's recording of the Chopin Waltzes issued on Pilz Vienna Masters Series CD 160 230. Further information derives from an obituary briefly posted online by the German newspaper Darmstädter Echo, accessed November 3, 2008.

He studied with Walter Gieseking, Adrian Aeschbacher and, at the Beethoven-Class Positano, with Wilhelm Kempff. In 1960 he began touring in Europe, North Africa, and Asia; his performing accomplishments included presenting a complete cycle of the Beethoven sonatas on consecutive evenings. At the invitation of the Chopin Society of Warsaw, Poland, of which he was a member, he performed at Chopin’s birth house in Żelazowa Wola, Poland. Schmalfuss also arranged various small festivals in which he championed neglected chamber music by Carl Maria von Weber. He did not exclude contemporary music from his attention, however; for instance, he recorded piano music by Akin Euba in 1989 and presented one of the piano sonatas by Salvatore Sciarrino at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. Schmalfuss had a reputation as a fine sight-reader and a reliable substitute when other artists were forced to cancel appearances.

Schmalfuss began making records in the 1960s, but he received little or no attention from major labels. His recordings released on CD, at least in the United States, appeared almost exclusively on bottom-priced, mass-market-oriented labels; nonetheless, they reveal a musical player and bear out his affinity for the music of Chopin.

Peter Schmalfuss (13 January 1937 – 23 October 2008) was a German classical pianist born in Berlin, Germany.