Mischa Portnoff

Mischa Portnoff, born in Berlin on August 29, 1901, and died on May 15, 1979, was an American composer, pianist, and teacher whose work spanned classical concert music, Broadway, Hollywood film, and piano pedagogy. His father, Leo Portnoff, a violinist and composer who taught at Berlin's Stern Conservatory from 1906 to 1915, began instructing Mischa on piano when the boy was eight years old. Portnoff completed his formal training at the Swedish Royal Academy of Music, where he studied piano technique, theory, and composition.

By 1918, at seventeen, Portnoff had developed into a virtuoso pianist. That year he and his older brother Vassily, a violinist, launched a concert tour through Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and England before crossing the Atlantic to perform across Canada and the United States. The brothers eventually settled in New York City, and in 1925 they opened a music studio in Brooklyn. Their father Leo emigrated to the United States in 1922, teaching in New York for eleven years before joining the faculty of the University of Miami as a professor of violin and composition. Leo remained an adviser to Mischa throughout his life.

In Brooklyn, Portnoff directed his energies toward teaching and composition, concentrating initially on works for two pianos. His compositions in that medium were performed in concert halls in both the United States and Europe and were broadcast on American network radio by the duo-piano teams of Pierre Luboshutz and Genia Neminoff and of Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson. His first extended work, Concerto Quasi una Fantasia, premiered in 1937 at New York's Town Hall, performed by Bartlett and Robertson. A New York Times critic identified as "N.S." described the piece as conceived in the modern idiom while possessing a melodic flow uncommon in compositions of its dissonant genre. Bartlett and Robertson subsequently performed the concerto in several European cities.

Conductor John Barbirolli, then leading the New York Philharmonic, heard a private performance of the work and wrote to Portnoff that he had not been moved by any new composition in a long time. That response initiated a three-year collaborative relationship during which Barbirolli supported Portnoff's work on a concerto for piano and full orchestra. In 1940, Barbirolli wrote to pianist Nadia Reisenberg asking her to introduce the new concerto to the public. On February 23, 1941, Reisenberg performed Portnoff's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. New York Times critic Olin Downes noted that the performance was received with prolonged applause and praised Reisenberg's virtuosity and musical thinking in navigating a demanding solo part. Musicologist David Ewen characterized the concerto's harmonic and rhythmic structure as clearly the work of a twentieth-century composer while also expressive of a romantic spirit. The Barbirolli Society included the concerto on a 2008 compact disc, with liner notes describing it as a dazzlingly effective work combining stylistic elements of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. The concerto was never performed again after its premiere.

In 1947, Paramount music director Boris Morros contacted Portnoff and his brother Wesley to compose a rhapsody for the climax of the film Carnegie Hall. The piece, titled The 57th Street Rhapsody, was to be performed by the New York Philharmonic with Harry James as trumpet soloist. The brothers completed the commission within three days. In the film, Mischa's hands are shown playing the piano during the rhapsody. A lighter composition Portnoff had written in 1931 was later used throughout the conclusion of the 2005 film Cinderella Man.

In 1950, Portnoff composed the score for a Broadway musical adaptation of Donagh MacDonagh's verse play Happy as Larry, his verified Broadway credit as book writer. The production, directed by and starring Burgess Meredith, also featured opera singer Marguerite Piazza in her Broadway debut, along with Irwin Corey and Gene Barry. Happy as Larry opened on January 6, 1950, at Broadway's Coronet Theater. Critical response was sharply divided. Brooks Atkinson called the production an ordeal but described the Portnoffs' songs as eccentric and charming. William Saroyan ranked it among the two most daring, effective, meaningful, and satisfying plays of his time. Writing in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Louis Sheaffer observed that playgoers who preferred conventional theatrical fare might be disconcerted by the show, while more adventurous audiences would enjoy it.

Alongside his compositional work, Portnoff maintained an active career as a piano teacher and published instructional materials for piano students. Those publications incorporated music representative of different eras and cultures as well as arrangements of Broadway show tunes, and introduced innovative approaches to piano instruction.