Barbara Nissman

Education and awards

Nissman attended the University of Michigan on full scholarship and received a Bachelor of Music degree in 1966. Upon graduation she was awarded the Stanley Medal (named after Albert A. Stanley, Director of the School of Music from 1888 to 1921), "presented annually to the graduating senior...most outstanding in his or her curriculum, with special consideration given to scholarship and public performance."

In 1966 she was awarded a three-year National Defense Education Act Title IV fellowship for her master and doctoral studies at the University of Michigan. Nissman was also awarded a three-year post-doctoral grant from the university (underwritten by the Power Foundation in 1969) to begin her international performing career. In 1981 she was the recipient of the Michigan Alumnae Council's Athena Award, bestowed annually since 1973 "on outstanding alumnae who have distinguished themselves in professional and humanitarian endeavors," and the School of Music's Citation of Merit Award in 1996, presented annually "to recognize and honor individuals who have made outstanding contributions to society, their profession, [or to the university]."

Nissman also received grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation and The Philadelphia Foundation, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts recital grant to present the Prokofiev sonata series at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center in 1989.

In 2003, Nissman was one of 23 pianists profiled in the article "Hall of Legends," which appeared in the Steinway & Sons 150th Anniversary Commemorative Publication. The profiled pianists, chosen from the thousands of past and present Steinway artists, also included Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Diana Krall, Van Cliburn, Billy Joel, Harry Connick, Jr., James Levine, Murray Perahia, Edward Kennedy Ellington, Alfred Brendel, Randy Newman, Evgeny Kissin, Herbie Hancock, Krystian Zimerman, Christopher O'Riley, Maurizio Pollini, Ignace Jan Paderewski, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Marcus Roberts, Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Wagner, and Billy Taylor.

In 2006, Nissman was elected to the Court of Honor of Distinguished Daughters of the Philadelphia High School for Girls "for outstanding lifetime achievement as an internationally acclaimed concert pianist, recording artist and educator."

In 2008 Nissman was a recipient of the Governor's Arts Award from the State of West Virginia for "Distinguished Service to the Arts."

In March 2016, she was honored by the State of West Virginia Division of Culture and History with its "Order of the Arts & Historical Letters" as well as its "Excellence in Support of the Arts" award.

Alberto Ginastera

Barbara Nissman has long been associated with the music of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, and the composer's final work, Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 54 (1982) is dedicated to her. In 1976 she was invited by the composer to play his Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 28 (1961) in Geneva at his sixtieth birthday celebration, where she performed the work with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Jean-Marie Auberson. She also presented the Netherlands premiere of the concerto at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and its UK premiere with the BBC Symphony, and has performed the concerto with the Chicago Symphony, St. Louis Symphony and the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Slatkin.

In 2006 she co-hosted a five-part BBC Radio 3 series that featured Ginastera as Composer-of-the-Week. In 2011, with the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Kiesler, she performed all 3 piano concertos in one evening including Concierto Argentino for piano and orchestra (an early work written in 1935 and then withdrawn from the catalogue by the composer shortly after its first performance) and the first performance in its original form of Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 39 (1972). Nissman et al.'s disc of all three concerti on the Pierian label represents the first recording of all three works and the “official reintroduction” of the Concierto Argentino. After Nissman discovered this concerto in the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music in Philadelphia, Aurora Natola-Ginastera, the widow of the composer, granted her exclusivity to perform the work and also to make available its first recording. Nissman is also the editor of the new critical edition of Piano Concerto No. 2, published by Boosey & Hawkes.

In 2016 Nissman celebrated Ginastera’s 100th birthday with a series of concerts devoted to the man and his music at Spectrum in NYC and also at Kings Place, London as well as master classes and lectures throughout the UK. On April 28, 2016, Nissman gave a lecture and performed works by Ginastera at a special celebration held at the Argentine Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Nissman's article “Remembering Alberto Ginastera—a centenary tribute” appeared in the April–June 2016 issue of Musical Opinion (UK)

Sergei Prokofiev

Nissman made history in 1989 by becoming the first pianist to perform the complete piano sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev in a series of three recitals in both New York and London, and premiered the two-page fragment of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 10 in E minor, Op. 137 (1952) during her Prokofiev series at Lincoln Center. Her recordings of this repertoire represented the first complete set of Prokofiev's piano sonatas made available on compact disc.

As a Prokofiev scholar and authority, Nissman first visited the Soviet Union in 1984, at the height of the Cold War, as a guest of the Embassy of Denmark in Moscow. In 1998 she returned to Russia as a guest of the Moscow State Conservatory to present master classes and concerts of Prokofiev's music, and also presented master classes at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

In commemoration of Prokofiev's 100th birthday in 1991, Nissman performed the complete cycle of his piano sonatas throughout Europe and the United States.

On May 8, 2004, Nissman presented a lecture at the University of London titled “Prokofiev Meets Gershwin: Gershwin Meets Prokofiev,” as part of a conference titled Prokofiev and America. The conference, which also featured lectures by Arnold Whittall, Alastair Macaulay, Harlow Robinson, Noëlle Mann, et al., was jointly sponsored by the university’s Sergei Prokofiev Archive and its Institute of United States Studies (now the Institute for the Study of the Americas). The lecture was adapted into an article titled “When Gershwin Met Prokofiev” that was printed in the Winter 2005 issue of Piano Today magazine and adapted for the January 2016 issue of the Three Oranges Journal. Nissman also performed several of Prokofiev's solo piano works at the conference's John Coffin Memorial Recital.

Nissman was a featured performer at the dedication of Columbia University's Prokofiev Archive on April 24, 2015, with members of the Prokofiev family in attendance. She was also a featured performer at the International Prokofiev Symposium, held at Louisiana State University in February 2016, that also featured addresses by Richard Taruskin, Simon Morrison and Gabriel Prokofiev.

Prokofiev biographer Daniel Jaffé, in the December 2008 issue of BBC Music Magazine, selected Nissman's recordings as the best recordings of Prokofiev's piano music.

Béla Bartók

In 2002 Scarecrow Press published Nissman’s book,Bartók and the Piano: A Performer’s View, including a full-length CD of selected works performed by the author. At the University of Michigan Nissman studied with György Sándor, himself a student of Béla Bartók.

Nissman was the first to perform and record Bartók’s unpublished 1898 Sonata, which she discovered in the Morgan Library's manuscript collection while researching her book. Out of Doors, the first release on Nissman's own label Three Oranges Recordings, pays homage to Bartok's 1926 composition.

Notable Achievements

From 1977 to 1980 Nissman served as artist in residence for the John Deere corporation, providing "recitals, master classes, and a music lecture series to Deere plant communities in the U.S. and abroad for six months each year." This was the first time an international corporation employed a classical artist to appear in factories, plants, and branch houses throughout the United States, Mexico and Europe. Prior to her work with John Deere, she participated in the Affiliate Artists program, serving from 1974 to 1976 as Affiliate Artist for the Arizona Commission on the Arts, widening the audience for classical music by presenting informal concerts at unconventional venues.

From 1978-1980, Nissman appeared on BBC Television’s popular daytime show, Pebble Mill at One,and introduced the series Barbara & Friends with Barbara chatting informally about her favorite composer “friends” and their music. A documentary was made by BBC Television about Barbara and her outreach work in schools, factories and in the concert hall.

In 1982, Nissman was the featured performer in the first Gracht (Canal) concert held in Amsterdam on the Prinsengracht and attended by 8,000 people. The Prinsengracht concerts have remained a popular summer tradition, with audiences arriving on foot or in their boats to listen.

In 1984 Nissman was one of the featured performers at the Dedication of the American Poets' Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. Walter Cronkite hosted the event that also included appearances by Rosalyn Tureck, Paul Winter, Michael Tree, Zubin Mehta, and readings by the actor Gregory Peck and the poets Robert Penn Warren, Daniel Haberman and Edgar Bowers.

In 1988, Nissman was one of the participants in the "International Celebration of the Piano" held at Carnegie Hall, celebrating Steinway’s 135th anniversary.

For the 1996 Kennedy Center 25th Anniversary Gala Concert, broadcast on public television, Nissman performed two numbers arranged for ten pianos, alongside pianists Leonard Slatkin (who also conducted the ensemble), David Buechner, Cy Coleman, Joseph Kalichstein, Peter Nero, David Hyde Pierce, Peter Schickele, Jeffrey Siegel, and Alicia Witt.

Since 2002, Nissman has been involved with the Robert James Frascino AIDS Foundation benefit concert series “A Concerted Effort.” To date these concerts have raised well over two million dollars for AIDS service organizations worldwide. In November 2014 she performed at a gala at the de Young Museum in San Francisco to honor Dr. Arthur Ammann, founder of Global Strategies, an organization that serves the healthcare needs of women and children in neglected areas of the world.

In 2007, Nissman appeared on stage with Don Henley and Billy Joel, performing on the “Walden Woods Steinway” in a gala fundraiser for the Walden Woods Project, held at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Books, Writings and Editions (selected)

Works in progress:

DVD Series

Discography (selected)