switched careers into a completely different field(nothing to do with music)?

I mean pianists who were extremely talented(with probably enough talent to make a good living)but more or less starting out or pianists who were already successful enough to earn a good living from just performing.

I got the idea for this thread from the thread about dropping out of music school. In chess, where it is even much harder to make a living, there are some top notch players who have completely swithced careers for example Patrick Wolf(lawyer?), Reuben Fine(psychiatrist), Isaac kashdan, Michael Wilder(lawyer), Stuart Rachels(professor etc.

Paderwski quit the concert stage to become a politician and diplomat. He was Prime Minister of Poland and also their ambassador to the League of Nations.

Canadian pianist Nadia Cole is now a doctor...the Israeli pianist David-Bar Illan became assistant to Benjamin Netanyahu of the Israeli government..

I know two pianists who took started as university professors and then moved into administration.

Both are now provosts at American universities.

I went to college with a guy, damn good pianist, who appeared for the first few weeks, disappeared then turned up for his finals 3 years later! He past them all and demanded his degree, the college turned him down as he had failed to turn up to any classes, whereupon he showed them there was nothing in their constitution that stipulated he had to attend. They handed it over, he went off to postgrad law school!

oh that was my twin... the one that studied in Europe.

People who play piano well are usually smart people.
That is why so many smart people if they had the opportunity to learn how to play piano, they play piano well.

Till today, I have never met people who can play piano well and dumb.

Look at the finalists of any amateur piano competitions, most of them have very high education, many doctors, PhDs, etc, for example our Marc C.

I heard Evgeny Kissin is taking a two year sabbatical from piano (still performing but not his usual 60 concerts a year) and is now devoting his time the Jewish vs. Palestinian problems in Jerusaelm (pardon my awful spelling). In an interview, he was asked if he wanted to take up a political career and he replied: "Am I interested in politics? Yes. As for participation: I have no such plans. But I cannot exclude the possibility that if the time comes and I feel the need to speak out on which I find important, I may do so." It's amazing how eloquent he is.

I know them too well...

Is there any completely opposite case? i.e. they dropped out from other career (nothing to do with music) to become a pianist

Pogo stopped concertizing for a few years in order to go into jewelry design...

While this is true, I'm not so sure he stopped in order TO take up jewelry design, but rather took up jewelry design as a result of the stoppage in his performing career. At least that's the way I understood it.

At the height of his career, in 1969, the Brazilian virtuoso João Carlos Martins "was knocked down during a soccer match, and hurt his arm to the point of a painful neuralgia, so that he had to stop playing piano. But in a surprising change of direction, he went into banking, managed a champion prizefighter, started a construction company, and became a multimillionaire in devalued Brazilian currency. An even more surprising development followed when, in 1981, he was appointed to the post of the Brazilian state secretary of culture; in this capacity, he exhibited an extraordinary knack for urban recovery in the direction of futuristic Americanization." (From his bio)

Albert Wong was a child prodigy who recorded the Bach Well-Tempered Clavier when he was 11. After an accident at age 12 he entered college and majored in science, where he specialized in developing new drug delivery systems.

Alberto Reyes is both a concert pianist as well as an interpreter at the United Nations.

feebeejk,



Closest I've heard to this is James Rhodes .

He'd had lessons until the age of 18 but, I believe, had a large bucket full of "issues".

"... at 18 I abandoned the piano entirely and did not touch a note for over 10 years. Instead I went to work in the City in the, as it turns out false, belief that making hideous amounts of money would make up for the loss of my abandoned career as a pianist"

I know nothing about him, other than I enjoyed the BBC documentary shown a few weeks ago in which he featured, about Chopin (filmed in the original locations and salons). He seems to be carving out a Russell Brand style niche for himself.

Perhaps he fits the bill for both yours and the OPs?

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) gave up a career as organist, pianist, music scholar in France/Germany to become a medical missionary in Africa.

Denny Zeitlin is both a pianist and psychiatrist. Wim Statius Muller taught music before becoming an intelligence officer for NATO.

Not from scratch. They had to have had some connection with the piano or music at some earlier point in their life, I think.

I have heard that Alexis Weissenberg had another career designing greeting cards.

Thalberg retired early and became a winemaker.

Imre Antal became an actor and comic after an incurable illness of his hands ended his musical career.

Liszt also priest lol

Not quite what the OP is talking about, but in some countries (Israel and Korea for example), mandatory military service means that almost all musicians from those countries had to take a year or two off to serve their country's military.

Even Ravel joined the war effort for a time, composing relatively little during those years.

... and now everyone in the military has to wake up to that hideous Rav-eille.

Yes, but he didnlt give up music.

Ouch.

Also staying on chess players, Mark Taimanov (Soviet grandmaster) went to Leningrad conservatory and could have been/was a concert pianist.

I am not sure whether he ever made money from it or whether you would consider that he had a successful career at it, but the late Formula One driver, Elio de Angelis, was considered to be a concert standard pianist.

Unfortunately, he was killed in 1986 behind the wheel of his race car in a testing accident.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was supposedly a concert pianist. Though, I don't know if it was ever viable as a "career option" for her.

I think she could have been a jazz master...