Menahem Pressler, the distinguished pianist and founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio, died today, May 6, in London. He was 99.

The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music announced the death of the distinguished professor of music in piano and Dean Charles H. Webb Chair in Music.  He joined the Jacobs School of Music faculty in 1955 and received the Indiana University Medal in 2013.

“Mr. Pressler was a brilliant pianist, an extraordinary teacher, and gentle soul who has left an indelible mark on generations of pianists around the globe,” IU Jacobs School of Music dean Abra Bush said in a statement. “He believed that his ‘performance informed his practice, and his practice informed his performance,’ and he loved nothing more than practicing! His loss is an enormous loss for us all, but his presence will continue to be felt through his students, past and present, for decades to come.”

Since the trio’s debut at the Berkshire Music Festival in 1955, there were multiple constellations of players over nearly 55 years. But Mr. Pressler remained the anchor, and its heart and soul. After the Beaux Arts Trio’s final, emotional performance in 2008 (with violinist Daniel Hope, cellist Antonio Meneses), Mr. Pressler continued to captivate audiences throughout the world, performing solo and chamber music recitals to great critical acclaim while maintaining a dedicated teaching career.

Mr. Pressler performed many times in Cincinnati over his remarkable 70-plus-year career. In 1962, the original Beaux Arts Trio with violinist Daniel Guilet and cellist Bernard Greenhouse, performed for Matinee Musicale, the first of five performances for that organization alone.

In 2011, Mr. Pressler, then nearly 88, returned to play back-to-back concerts locally. He performed a piano recital in Hall Auditorium at Miami University in Oxford on a Saturday, followed by a chamber music program for the Linton Series in Cincinnati over the next two days. Mr. Pressler’s musical partners included two IU colleagues — violinist Alexander Kerr, former concertmaster of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and Eric Kim, former CSO principal cellist – as well as violist Paul Neubauer, an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

For him, it was all a great joy. For me, the memory of his solo piano recital of Beethoven, Debussy and Schubert still lingers. His artistry was of the golden era of pianism. Even after a lifetime at the piano, he could still offer fresh insights into the classics. Well into his 90s, he possessed agility and power. This concert was all about beauty of sound, subtlety and thoughtful phrasing, particularly in his performance of Debussy’s “Estampes.” In an era of excessive showmanship, Mr. Pressler never drew attention to himself, but instead, got to the heart of each composer.

During that visit, I spent some time with him discussing music and his career. I had been privileged to be accepted into his chamber music master classes for several summers at IU long ago, and I can thank him for teaching me so much, as can legions of so many others of his students.

At the time, he’d been flitting around the world — a concert with the Orchestre de Paris, to London for performances in a Shostakovich cycle, and back again to receive the prestigious Wigmore Medal, and then to Taiwan for the 100th birthday, where he played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. Besides all that, he had a “huge studio” of 15 students.

Even Mr. Pressler could not believe that he still possessed such energy.  “(Mieczysław) Horszowski was my role model. He played until 100. look, I am 87 and I never had glasses. Everyone has to adjust to the light onstage, not me! It is unbelievable,” he told me.

“All my life I have been hungry to make music. This hunger has not been stilled. I feel the same hunger, the same desire to go and make music. It fills my life and it is my reason for being. It is a very strange thing. Yes, many people would now would take it easy, have a home in Florida – I don’t need any of those things. I need my Schubert, I need my Beethoven, I need my Brahms, I need my Bach. I need those to be sustained.”

Born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1923, Mr. Pressler fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and emigrated to Israel.

“Now I know that when we emigrated, when we ran away (from Germany) and arrived in Israel, and every time meal time came, I couldn’t eat,” he said. “So I became very thin. And my father thought, this is a young gifted fellow. But I know I was damaged. And what kept me alive, what was my saving, was music. So when I made the music, I felt good. That’s why no one ever had to ask me to practice. On the contrary, my father would come home and say, ‘It’s enough, I need a little peace!’ … It was my joy. And I still practice late at night.”

Mr. Pressler’s world-renowned career was launched after he was awarded first prize at the Debussy International Piano Competition in San Francisco in 1946. (Darius Milhaud was chairman of the jury, which also included Roger Sessions, he told me.)  That was followed by his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Eugene Ormandy. Mr. Pressler’s ensuing tours of North America, Europe, and the Far East included performances with virtually all of the world’s leading orchestras.

The recordings: Mr. Pressler recorded almost the entire piano trio repertoire with the Beaux Arts Trio. In 2015, Decca released a 60-CD set of the trio’s complete Philips recordings comprising some 122 works. Additionally, he compiled more than 30 solo recordings.

The piano legend’s second volume of the complete set of Mozart sonatas for the La Dolce Volta label was released in 2017. His CD of French music for Deutsche Grammophon, “Clair de Lune,” was released in 2018, and his Schumann recording featuring “Dichterliebe” with Matthias Goerne and “Kinderszenen” for Harmonia Mundi was released in 2019.

Mr. Pressler’s DVDs include a live recital, concertos with Paavo Järvi and the Orchestre de Paris, and his Mozart concerto for the Berlin Philharmonic’s New Year concert with Simon Rattle, transmitted live worldwide in 2015. His  90^th birthday concert, live from the Salle Pleyel in Paris, was recorded for DVD and CD with the Ebène Quartet and Pregardien, among others.

IU will update the Jacobs School of Music community on its website as information about a memorial service or funeral arrangements become available.