Sometimes a musical figure can receive the finest training possible and go in exile from a prominent musically active city to a safe distant refuge while maintaining the highest level of artistry possible. Tiegerman was born somewhere in Poland and was given lessons by Leschetizky. All of his lessons were prepared for by Ignaz Friedman, then Leschetizky's assistant. Friedman considered Tiegerman to be the greatest talent he ever worked with in his life, a statement he made only once. Tiegerman, a Jew, left Berlin in 1933 to move to Cairo, where he remained until his death, save for a few holidays in Kutzb¸hl, Austria. In Cairo he infrequently performed in public, occaionally over the radio and established his own conservatory. Instructors from Poland and Austria were invited annually to examine his students. Among his pupils are the literary scholar Edward Said, Mario Feninger and Paris-based pianist Henri Barda. Tiegerman was recorded in a Milanese studio one year before his death. A tape made earlier in Cairo of Brahms' Second Piano Concerto is miraculous: rather than being a mere interpretation of the score, it impresses one as though Tiegerman himself were creating the work. Had these precious few documents not survived, his name would have remained a remote legend, fading with the deaths of his students. One pupil spoke of Tiegerman as a private, reserved man who opened himself only to music and bestowed it with the utmost expressivity possible. Those hearing his playing will find that others seem tame by comparison, so fully does he convey the music's inner life. In German his name means 'Tiger Man', a very apt description of his musical character
Read an article on Tiegerman, courtesy of http://egy.com, by Samir Raafat
©; Allan Evans, 1996