Binghamton University - Magazine: A motivation for innovation CURRENT ISSUE MULTIMEDIA POST CONTENT SUBSCRIBE Spring 2014
Remembering Norbert Pianist ensures his uncle won't be forgotten By Sophia Rosenbaum '12
Roger Peltzman '86 dedicated his first CD to his uncle, the late Norbert Stern. It was the biggest performance of his life, but moments before, it felt more like a walk down the green mile. Roger Peltzman ’86 stood behind the curtain, his palms clammy as he waited to perform.
More than 200 people were there to hear him play. He made sure he dressed comfortably — a silk Tori Richard shirt, black dress pants and a fresh pair of Florsheim shoes — even though his preferred practice attire is shorts, no shirt. As he entered stage left, through the same door his beloved Beatles once walked, he took a bow, sat down at the 9-foot Steinway piano and began to play his first show at Carnegie Hall.
Peltzman was never a prodigy. Now 52, he did not become serious about playing the piano until he was in his twenties and about to graduate from Binghamton University. Yet, Peltzman has played at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall six times since that first performance in 2001 and is a renowned piano teacher in New York City, where he teaches at Third Street Music School Settlement. In December, he completed his first album, Dedication: Roger Peltzman Plays Chopin, a tribute to his uncle Norbert Stern, a piano prodigy who died at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. Stern was 21.
Music in his DNA
Raised by a musical family in Rockland County, N.Y., in the 1960s, Peltzman was a Beatlemaniac by age 2. He and his two brothers played piano as kids, but none stuck with it. Their mother, Beatrice, attended
Binghamton University - Magazine: A motivation for innovation CURRENT ISSUE MULTIMEDIA POST CONTENT SUBSCRIBE Spring 2014
Remembering Norbert Pianist ensures his uncle won't be forgotten By Sophia Rosenbaum '12
Roger Peltzman '86 dedicated his first CD to his uncle, the late Norbert Stern. It was the biggest performance of his life, but moments before, it felt more like a walk down the green mile. Roger Peltzman ’86 stood behind the curtain, his palms clammy as he waited to perform.
More than 200 people were there to hear him play. He made sure he dressed comfortably — a silk Tori Richard shirt, black dress pants and a fresh pair of Florsheim shoes — even though his preferred practice attire is shorts, no shirt. As he entered stage left, through the same door his beloved Beatles once walked, he took a bow, sat down at the 9-foot Steinway piano a
nd began to play his first show at Carnegie Hall.
Peltzman was never a prodigy. Now 52, he did not become serious about playing the piano until he was in his twenties and about to graduate from Binghamton University. Yet, Peltzman has played at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall six times since that first performance in 2001 and is a renowned piano teacher in New York City, where he teaches at Third Street Music School Settlement. In December, he completed his first album, Dedication: Roger Peltzman Plays Chopin, a tribute to his uncle Norbert Stern, a piano prodigy who died at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. Stern was 21.
Music in his DNA
Raised by a musical family in Rockland County, N.Y., in the 1960s, Peltzman was a Beatlemaniac by age 2. He and his two brothers played piano as kids, but none stuck with it. Their mother, Beatrice, attended