American pianist, writer, and teacher Jonathan Biss experienced an extreme panic attack in the middle of playing a recital. He had wrestled with anxiety around performing music for many years, and he felt ashamed of it. As he explained in an interview with Glenn Holsten, “I felt that either not having bad anxiety or at least known how to manage it was a prerequisite for being good at my job. To admit that I had this problem felt, very, very much for years, like admitting to failure.”
Jonathan Biss Plays Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 “Aufschwung”
Childhood
Jonathan Biss
Jonathan Biss was born on 18 September 1980 in Bloomington, Indiana. To be sure, his childhood was saturated with music as both parents, Miriam Fired and Paul Biss, played the violin. In fact, his paternal step-grandmother was cellist Raya Garbousova, one of the first well-known female cellists and dedicatee of Samuel Barber’s cello concerto. As Jonathan remembers, “music emanated from nearly every room in the house, including the bathrooms, which, while modest in their décor, were valued for their acoustical properties.”
Biss started formal piano studies at the age of six, and he took to the instrument with a vengeance. His enthusiasm, which family and friends described as “obsessiveness and neurosis” still informs his approach today. “Any other approach,” according to Biss, “would be unthinkable. If I ever stop finding music challenging and life-altering, I’ll quit and become an accountant.”
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-Flat Major, Op. 81a, “Les adieux” (Jonathan Biss, piano)
Teachers
Karen Taylor
With both his parents on the faculty of Indiana University Bloomington’s Jacobs School of Music, Biss joined the institution at the age of six and took first lessons with Karen Taylor and Evelyne Brancart. According to Biss, he was blessed with excellent teachers, and at the age of 17, he entered the Curtis Institute of Music to study with Leon Fleisher. Predictably, this proved a phenomenal learning experience.
As Leon Fleisher said of Biss in the run-up to his Carnegie Hall debut recital, “His ability and interest go for things of transcendence and sublimeness. That made a great impression on me. He took a very healthy road that started with chamber music, both with his mother and then more extensively at places like Ravinia and Marlboro, and he got to be known by the elders in the profession as somebody to look out for.”
Franz Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959 (Jonathan Biss, piano)
Debut Performances and the 21st Century
Leon Fleisher
Biss made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the 92nd Street Y, and he performed with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur in 2001. In 2002 he became the first American to be selected as a BBC New Generation Artist, and he won the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award the following year. Biss also started to write and talk about the role of music in the 21st century, and how he envisions classical music to compete among the complexities of a modern world.
As he explained, “most of our visual stimuli and things we are exposed to in the 21st century are more spectacular and noisier than classical music. I am always concerned that there is more focus on the personality of the artist, which makes it more difficult for the audience to come to the concert hall and completely lose themselves in what they are listening to. It is very important to me that my audience is given every chance possible to understand and to appreciate the music I am playing.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467 (Jonathan Biss, piano/cond.; Orpheus Chamber Orchestra)
Online Presence
Jonathan Biss © Benjamin Ealovega
Biss was appointed Neubauer Family Chair at Curtis Institute of Music, and as part of his teaching, Biss became the first classical musician to partner with Coursera. Founded by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, Coursera is an open online platform that works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses, certifications, and degrees in a variety of subjects.
Partnering with Coursera, Biss released several free video courses on Beethoven’s most famous sonatas. Apparently, it has reached more than 150,000 students in over 185 countries. Known for his immersive focus on single composers, Biss had released projects related to Beethoven and Schumann, and he wrote the Kindle Single eBook A Pianist Under the Influence. He also wrote and narrated an audio book titled “Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven,” in which he examines his lifelong passion for the music of Beethoven and his own personal struggles with anxiety.
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