DANIELL REVENAUGH

REVENAUGH--Daniell, born May 30, 1934 died peacefully on March 12, 2021. He was a resident of Tallahassee, Florida and Berkeley, California. Revenaugh was a concert pianist, conductor, entrepreneur, impresario, and inventor. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky to Vernon Revenaugh and Evelyn Pouch, a member of Diaghilev's legendary Ballets Russes. Showing musical promise at an early age he made his debut at the age of 14 playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Louisville Orchestra. In 1951, Revenaugh began over a decade of study with the legendary pianist Egon Petri, a pupil of the composer/pianist Ferruccio Busoni, continuing a pianistic line that can be traced back to Ludwig van Beethoven. Revenaugh recognized that Busoni was not only underappreciated but a truly transformative musical figure. By his early 30s he became the foremost promoter of Busoni's musical legacy founding The Busoni Society in 1965 with Busoni pupils Rudolph Ganz and Gunnar Johansen. On January 26, 1966 he produced and conducted a Busoni 100th Anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall featuring the New York premiere of the composer's epic 70-plus minute Piano Concerto No. 1 performed by Johansen, a seventy-member chorus and the American Symphony Orchestra. In June 1967 he oversaw and conducted the first commercial recording of the work with pianist John Ogdon, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and John Alldis Choir for EMI at Abbey Road Studios in London. The recording was internationally recognized by critics, won awards and was the seminal event in the Busoni renaissance spearheaded by Revenaugh. In essence, he became the leading Busoni authority and amassed the most significant Busoni archive of letters and other archival materials in private hands. Revenaugh served as music director of the Jacksonville Symphony from 1969-970 and ran the San Jose Symphony Orchestra during a period of transition for that institution. Revenaugh was a graduate of Florida State University where he studied with Ernst von Dohnanyi and Lewis Pankaskie. He also studied with the composer Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland, California. Revenaugh was the founding general director of the Institute for Advanced Music Study in Crans-Montana, Switzerland where in 1973 he invited some of the greatest artists of that era to serve as faculty to students on full scholarship. They included violinist Zino Francescatti, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, hornist Ib Lanzky-Otto and conductor Rudolf Kempe, who would become a mentor to Revenaugh. In the 1990s Revenaugh invented and patented the Lower Lid for the concert grand piano with the goal of capturing and redirecting sound lost under the piano into the concert hall. The invention sparked attention of the media along with that of many great pianists including Martha Argerich, Peter Serkin, Andre Watts, Radu Lupu and Alexander Toradze. They all performed with the Lower Lid in many of the world's leading concert halls. In 1997, Carnegie Hall would not allow the legendary pianist Martha Argerich to use the Lower Lid and the story made Page One of The New York Times. Revenaugh recorded several more albums for EMI including a world premiere Busoni two-piano program with his friend Lawrence Leighton Smith in 2006. His final recording project was the 2010 world premiere recording of Carlisle Floyd's Piano Sonata on DVD which also included a coaching session with the composer himself. In between all of this Revenaugh traveled widely as a pianist and conductor, created a first of its kind Electric Symphony Orchestra in the 1970s with amplified instruments garnering national attention; produced Classical Cabarets in the 1990s; performed the complete piano sonatas by Schubert in 1997 marking the bicentennial of the composer's birth; and was a one- man hibernator of ideas that perpetuated interest in classical music by the broadest possible audience. Revenaugh is survived by his three children Augustus, Anton and Paul, and three grandchildren. His daughter Danielle Marie predeceased him in 2017.