The Incredible Life of Pianist Walter Hautzig, as Told By His Granddaughter

Last Monday, on Jan. 30, concert pianist Walter Hautzig died at the age of 95 at his home in Manhattan. A few days ago, The New York Times ran a fine obituary about Hautzig, who escaped the Nazis in Austria to Israel (then Palestine) and then the U.S. (Philadelphia and New York) in 1939. He became a naturalized citizen in 1945. Over the course of his career, Hautzig played all over the world, and in 1979, he was selected by the U.S. State Department to represent American in the People’s Republic of China—the first such visit of its kind since the Cultural Revolution.

In the video below, made by Hautzig’s granddaughter that includes interviews with her grandfather, Hautzig talks about the anti-Semitism he faced in his daily life as a boy in Vienna. In one instance, he talks about daring to visit a music academy in Vienna, where he found German troops sleeping on the floor with their rifles on the piano. Afterward, he went home and played the piano, something he hadn’t done in a while. He played a ballad—he plays the same one in the video below—and said to himself, “No matter what happens, this they can never take from me.”

Listen to his moving, peaceful performances here, and watch his grandfather’s video below: