Royland Earl Wild was born in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, in 1915. He was a musically precocious child and studied under
Selmar Janson at Carnegie-Tech University, and later with Marguerite Long,
Egon Petri, and Helene Barere (the wife of Simon Barere), among others.
As a teenager, he started making transcriptions of romantic music and composition. In 1931 he was invited to play at the White House by President Herbert Hoover. The next five presidents (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson), also invited him to play for them, and Wild remains the only pianist to have played for six consecutive presidents. In 1937, Wild was hired as a staff pianist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and in 1939 he became the first pianist to perform a recital on U.S. television. Wild later recalled that the small studio became so hot under the bright lights that the ivory piano keys started to warp. In 1942, Arturo Toscanini invited him for a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was, for Wild, a resounding success, although Toscanini himself has been criticized for not understanding the jazz idiom in which Gershwin wrote. During World War II, Wild served in the United States Navy playing 4th flute in the Navy band. He often traveled with Eleanor Roosevelt while she toured the United States supporting the war effort. Wild's duty was to perform the national anthem on the piano before she spoke. A few years after the war he moved to the newly formed American Broadcasting Company (ABC) as a staff pianist, conductor and composer until 1968. Wild created numerous virtuoso solo piano transcriptions including 14 songs by Rachmaninoff, and works on themes by Gershwin. His Grand Fantasy on Airs from Porgy and Bess was the first extended piano paraphrase on an American opera. He also wrote a number of original works including a large-scale Easter oratorio, Revelations (1962), the choral work The Turquoise Horse (1976), and the Doo-Dah Variations on a theme by Stephen Foster (1992) for piano and orchestra. His Sonata 2000 had its first performance in 2003 and was recorded by Wild for Ivory Classics. Wild recorded for several labels. Under his teacher, Selmar Janson, Wild had learned Xaver Scharwenka's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, which Janson had studied directly with the composer, his own teacher. When, over 40 years later, Erich Leinsdorf asked Wild to record the concerto, he was able to say "I've been waiting by the phone for forty years for someone to ask me to play this". In 1997 he was the first pianist to stream a performance over the Internet. Wild, who was openly gay, lived in Columbus, Ohio and Palm Springs, California with his domestic partner of 38 years, Michael Rolland Davis. He died aged 94 of congestive heart disease at home in Palm Springs. |
© 1989 Bruce Duffie
This conversation was recorded in Chicago on March 9, 1989. Portions were broadcast on WNIB the following day, and again in 1990, 1995, and 2000. This transcription was made in 2015, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.
To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.
Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.
You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.