Kuerti’s parents left Austria for the USA when he was a child and he became a naturalised citizen in 1944. His first piano studies were with Edward Goldman, a teacher in Boston, and his progress was so great that Kuerti was able to make his debut at the age of eleven playing Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor Op. 16 with the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler. At the Longy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Kuerti studied piano with Gregory Tucker and composition with Arthur Shepherd. From there he went to the Peabody Institute in Baltimore where he studied composition with Henry Cowell and piano with Ernő Balogh, a pupil of Bartók. Kuerti continued his studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music where he received composition lessons from Marcel Dick and piano instruction from Arthur Loesser and Beryl Rubinstein, gaining his Bachelor of Music degree in 1955. Kuerti’s last phase of education was at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where he studied with Rudolf Serkin and Mieczysław Horszowski.
Before gaining his diploma from the Curtis Institute, Kuerti had won the Leventritt Award in New York and had begun to tour widely. In 1963 he made his debut in London and received rave reviews, The Times stating, ‘A pianist with plenty of strong convictions, and ample courage of them, is always to be welcomed, and doubly so when his convictions are supported by as much musical insight and technical assurance as marked the playing of Mr Anton Kuerti at the Wigmore Hall yesterday afternoon.’ He played Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy D. 760, Beethoven’s ‘Les Adieux’ Sonata Op. 81a, Schumann’s Fantasiestücke Op. 111 and Bloch’s Sonata of 1935, and ended with Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F major Op. 10 No. 2. Returning to London just over a year later it was reported that the ‘favourable impression’ he had made previously ‘was amply confirmed’ in his Wigmore Hall recital. Again, Kuerti played music central to his repertoire by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, but also included a group of Scriabin études and préludes. Schumann’s Fantasie in C major Op. 17 was referred to as outstanding both musically and technically, whilst of Brahms’s Variations on a theme by Paganini Op. 35, The Times noted, ‘Mr Kuerti displayed his virtuosity to breath-taking effect.’
In 1965 Kuerti decided to settle in Toronto where he took up a post at the University. During his performing career he has played with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra and George Szell, the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy, and many of the other American orchestras. He has toured in nearly forty countries including Canada, America, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Russia. After settling in Canada Kuerti has regularly performed with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. In recent years he has played cycles of the complete Beethoven concertos.
Kuerti also enjoys playing chamber music and has collaborated with many string quartets including the Tokyo, Cleveland, and Guarneri, and with violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Kuerti is a founder-member of the Marlboro Trio and also founded the Festival of Sound in Ontario. He has given first performances of many works, including piano concertos by Oskar Morawetz (1963) and Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté (1967), and is a composer himself having written two string quartets (1954 and 1972), a violin sonata (1973), Symphony ‘Epomeo’ (1973), various works for solo piano and a piano concerto (1985). Kuerti also takes an interest in politics, running as a candidate for the Canadian Parliament in 1988. In 2002 Kuerti served as director of the first Czerny Festival in Edmonton.
Kuerti has made many recordings including the complete Beethoven piano sonatas which he recorded in the mid-1970s for the Analekta label. For the same label he has recorded some works of Schumann including Carnaval Op. 9, Humoreske Op. 20, the Piano Sonata No. 1 in F sharp minor Op. 11, and the Davidsbündlertänze Op. 6 of which the American Record Guide wrote, ‘He is a genuinely distinguished artist, and this disc, along with all his others, is warmly recommended.’ In the mid1980s Kuerti recorded the complete Beethoven piano concertos for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation label with Andrew Davis and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and in 1986 recorded very fine performances of both Mendelssohn concertos in London with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Paul Freeman. This recording was licensed by Pickwick International and issued by IMP. For the same label in the early 1990s Kuerti recorded and produced the complete piano sonatas by Schubert. Also in his discography are both concertos by Brahms and sonatas by Liszt, Glazunov, Scriabin and Tchaikovsky.
One of Kuerti’s earliest recordings is of the Symphony-Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Eckhardt-Gramatté, recorded for Canadian RCA in June 1968 with the CBC Festival Orchestra and Alexander Brott. It is an impressive performance of a rarely heard work. Recent recordings for the CBC label include Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor Op. 54 with the CBC Radio Orchestra and Mario Bernardi. Of this recording the American Record Guide wrote, ‘His approach is fascinating: instead of treating (it) as just another big, romantic romp… he finds and plays up its roots in Beethoven and Mozart. The result is a bold, interesting, unconventional performance that holds one’s attention from beginning to end.’ Kuerti’s interest in Czerny comes to the fore in a recent disc of two works for violin and piano which he plays with violinist Erika Raum.
