McKeesport native, renowned classical pianist with arthritis
Post-Gazette news services
NEW YORK — Byron Janis, a renowned American concert pianist and composer who broke barriers as a Cold War era culture ambassador and later overcame severe arthritis that nearly robbed him of his playing abilities, died Thursday. He was 95.
Mr. Janis passed away at a hospital in New York City, according to his wife, Maria Cooper Janis. In a statement, she described her husband as “an exceptional human being who took his talents to their highest pinnacle.”
Born Byron Yanks, in McKeesport, on March 24, 1928, he grew up in Pittsburgh, where his father, Samuel, owned a sporting goods store. The elder Mr. Yanks had changed the family name from Yankilevitch before his son was born, and he would change it twice more — to Jannes and, finally, Janis — by 1943.
A childhood prodigy who studied under Vladimir Horowitz, Mr. Janis emerged in the late 1940s as one of the most celebrated virtuosos of a new generation of talented American pianists.
Early in 1944, when he was 15, he made his orchestral debut, performing the Rachmaninoff Second Concerto with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. He played the same work with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra that February. Lorin Maazel, who was then 14, conducted.
In 1960, he was selected as the first musician to tour the then-Soviet Union as part of a cultural exchange program organized by the U.S. State Department. His recitals of Chopin and Mozart awed Russian audiences and were described by the New York Times as helping to break “the musical iron curtain.”
Seven years later, while visiting a friend in France, Mr. Janis discovered a pair of long-lost Chopin scores in a trunk of old clothing. He performed the waltzes frequently over the ensuing years, eventually releasing a widely hailed compilation featuring those performances.
But his storied career, which spanned more than eight decades, was also marked by physical adversity, including a freak childhood accident that left his left pinky permanently numb and convinced doctors he would never play again.
He suffered an even greater setback as an adult. At age 45, he was diagnosed with a severe form of psoriatic arthritis in his hands and wrists. Mr. Janis kept the condition secret for over a decade, often playing through excruciating pain.
“It was a life-and-death struggle for me every day for years,” Mr. Janis later told the Chicago Tribune. “At every point, I thought of not being able to continue performing, and it terrified me. Music, after all, was my life, my world, my passion.”
He revealed his diagnosis publicly in 1985 following a performance at the Reagan White House, where he was announced as a spokesperson for the Arthritis Foundation.
The condition required multiple surgeries and temporarily slowed his career. However, he was able to resume performing after making adjustments to his playing technique that eased pressure on his swollen fingers.
Mr. Janis remained active in his later years, composing scores for television shows and musicals, while putting out a series of unreleased live performances. His wife, Cooper Janis, said her husband continued to create music until his final days.