Michael Orrin Karl Ponti

1937 - 2022

PONTI

MICHAEL ORRIN KARL PONTI

Michael Orrin Karl Ponti was a child prodigy who became a world-renowned classical piano virtuoso. Adored father and husband, he died peacefully at the age of 84 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany on October 17, 2022. He was born on October 29, 1937 to Zita (Ph.D.) and Joseph Ponti in Freiburg, Germany. He was an only child. He is survived by his first wife, Carmen Elena Wiechmann of Washington, DC and Frankfurt, Germany; and his four children: Michael Claudio Joseph Hutchings of Heytesbury, Wiltshire, UK, Carmen Desiree Ponti of Old Town Alexandria, VA, Jasmin Maria Ponti Plekavich of Warrenton, VA, and Maximilian Albert Leo Ponti of Innsbruck, Austria. He was predeceased on January 9, 2017 by his second wife, Beatrice "Bieke" Ponti (M.D.).



He was a master student of Professor Erich Flinsch in Frankfurt, Germany who was a grand disciple of Franz Liszt and under whose tutelage he developed his brilliant technique and uniquely recognizable interpretations. He went on to win many accolades and prizes for his work, including First Prize at the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in 1964. He made over 80 recordings, including the complete works for piano and orchestra of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. He championed the ""forgotten"" Romantics through his recitals and recordings, including those of Henselt, Litolff, Scriabin, Moszkowski, and Thalberg. He gave performances in the world's great concert venues including the Sydney Opera House, Teatro Colon, and the Alice Tully Hall at New York's Lincoln Center. He played with the world's leading orchestras. He performed under the world's greatest conductors including Solti, Masur, Kondrashin, and Sawallisch. He founded and recorded with the Ponti-Zimansky-Polasek trio which performed all over Europe. Together with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau he recorded the fiendishly difficult Charles Ives Lieder. High Fidelity Magazine was prompted to refer to him as "Ten pianists in one" and Germany's Fono Forum, Tokyo's Musica Viva and New York's FM Guide among others, featured him on their covers.



Papi, as he was known to his children, was a lifelong lover of baseball, a passion that began as a child living in College Park, Maryland, U.S.A., where he followed the then Washington Senators and the Baltimore Orioles. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball history and its great players, and an extraordinary ability to recall decades' worth of box scores. He loved his rescue cats and dogs, his teddy bears, opera, being taken for drives around Bavaria, and Neapolitan ice cream. In his later years, he found respite from travel at his home in Eschenlohe at the foot of the Wetterstein mountains of Bavaria, where he spent many happy hours tackling the grass with his ancient and blunt push mower in between "running up and down" the local alps. When he was at home, he made Bieke's breakfast every morning of buttered toast with creamy honey, banana, and cinnamon and very strong, very hot coffee to fortify her for the long days as anesthesiologist, first at the Klinikum Garmisch-Partenkirchen and later at its affiliate, the Unfallklinik in Murnau, where she was Chief of Anesthesiology. A terrible and hugely reluctant driver, he instead rode his bicycle everywhere to get groceries and the Herald Tribune. He suffered a massive stroke in his 60s, from which he recovered sufficiently to play concerts featuring pieces for the left hand. He retired in his late 60s.

His indomitable spirit lives on in his extraordinary catalog of recordings, in the memory of his legions of faithful fans who flocked to his concerts all over the world, in the wisdom he passed on to his students, and in his full throated appreciation of the great classical musicians of his era. He lives on in his children, extended family, and intimate friends who are heartbroken by his passing: they celebrate his extraordinary, complex life. A private service will be held in the U.S.A.