1992 Metcalf Cup & Prize

Anthony di Bonaventura, SFA

The public performance and recordings of Anthony di Bonaventura establish his greatness as an artist and his preeminence as an interpreter of Scarlatti. His master classes and the performances and recordings of his students establish his greatness as a teacher.

His students without exception praise his teaching. One calls him "not only one of the best teachers I have ever had, but also one of the most positive influences in my life." Students write of his indefatigable willingness to extend lessons and meet at off-hours, of his willingness to give them his unlisted telephone number.

No one who has seen Anthony di Bonaventura teach will forget the experience. The student, gifted and proficient at the start, audibly improves as the lesson proceeds. Professor di Bonaventura listens with quiet intensity, plays an illustrative passage, and in a learned and lucid exposition explains why his interpretation responds more closely to the score. The student tries again. From the delighted expressions on the face of the maestro and pupil, even the tone-deaf would know that the student's mastery of the passage has advanced. A student puts it succinctly: "He has given me the confidence to become the pianist I have dreamed of becoming."

Professor di Bonaventura's mentorship of his students extends beyond their own playing. A student writes of him, "I have modeled my own teaching after his, and I owe my success as a teacher to his guidance."

Anthony di Bonaventura, artistic mentor of some of the most talented and accomplished pianists in the world, a consummate teacher of teachers, embodies the excellence in teaching which the Metcalf Cup and Prize was designed to honor.