Seymour Bernstein, an acclaimed pianist who struggled to overcome a stage fright so severe that he cut short his performing career and shifted into teaching and composing, died on Thursday in Damariscotta, Maine. He was 99. His death, at an assisted-living facility, was confirmed by Bill Finizio, a friend. In the 1950s, when he was…
Four years ago, at the close of the biggest concert of his career in Paris, the French pianist Sofiane Pamart did something unexpected to the instrument that brought him to fame: He took a flamethrower and set it on fire. Two years later, his instrument was aflame again as he played John Lennon’s “Imagine” while…
Josef Slenczynski lay on the battlefield and bargained. A down-at-the-heels young man from Poland who had come to the United States not long before, Mr. Slenczynski was serving in World War I with the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe. In civilian life he was a violinist of large ambition but no large reputation, and now…
