Dame Fanny Waterman (1920-2020) - some recollections, with love and affection | reviews, news & interviews Dame Fanny Waterman (1920-2020) - some recollections, with love and affection
Dame Fanny Waterman (1920-2020) - some recollections, with love and affection
The Leeds International Piano Competition s Artstic Director remembers its founder
by Adam GatehouseTuesday, 22 December 2020
Dame Fanny Waterman (centre) with 2018 Leeds international Piano Competition Winner Eric Lu (left) and megastar pianist Lang Lang
Dame Fanny Waterman was a true force of nature, in the best sense of the word. Her diminutive height belied a giant intellectual force and a steely determination to achieve the seemingly unachievable through every means she could muster.
Dame Fanny Waterman, forceful founder of the Leeds International Piano Competition – obituary
‘A combination of human dynamo and bulldozer’, she transformed her city from a classical backwater into the capital of piano music
Dame Fanny Waterman in 2010
Credit: Rob Scott/Rex
Dame Fanny Waterman, who has died aged 100, was the author of books and graded tutors which nurtured the talents of young pianists throughout the world; in 1963 she founded the triennial Leeds International Piano Competition, which launched the careers of such virtuosi as Murray Perahia and Radu Lupu.
Affectionately known throughout Leeds as “Field Marshal Fanny”, Fanny Waterman made up with her iron will and Yorkshire blunt-speaking for what she lacked in physical stature. One former winner of the Leeds competition described her as “a combination of human dynamo and bulldozer” and, until she was well into her nineties, she presided over the event with nit-picking attention to detail – proof-r