By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Leonid Hambro, 86, a versatile pianist who performed as the sidekick of musical comedian Victor Borge and who later presented concerts of music selected by his audiences, died Oct. 23 at Veterans Medical Center in New York. He had been injured six weeks earlier in a fall at a New York post office.
A child prodigy, Mr. Hambro gave his first recital at 5. He went through the Juilliard School of Music on a scholarship and had begun a successful career on radio and on the concert stage before meeting Borge, the clowning Danish pianist who was a popular star for decades.
A skilled sight reader with an easy fluency at the keyboard, Mr. Hambro also possessed a phenomenal musical memory and a keen ability to mimic other pianists. In later years, after he had stopped appearing with Borge, he gave what he called "command performances," in which randomly chosen audience members picked a concert's content from a list of works that eventually reached a total of nearly 200.
Few pianists could match Mr. Hambro's broad repertoire. At a moment's notice, he could perform a selection from Bach, Chopin, Debussy or Shostakovich or perhaps his arrangement of "Anchors Aweigh." Although the concerts sometimes had "plainly disastrous" results, in the words of one critic, they were invariably delivered with warmth and panache.
"It certainly steps aside from the regular 'ho-hum-another-piano-recital' syndrome," Mr. Hambro told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. "Before I play a single note, the audience is involved in the evening."
He made more than 100 recordings during his career and was the pianist with the New York Philharmonic for many years. From 1946 to 1962, he was the staff pianist at WQXR, a New York classical radio station. He performed with top orchestras around the world and with such eminent conductors as Arturo Toscanini, Eugene Ormandy and Leonard Bernstein.
Mr. Hambro had a showman's flair and a touch of whimsy, which -- coupled with his unquestioned musical talent -- brought him to the attention of Borge, who had been mixing comedy and classical music since the 1930s. Soon after they met in 1960, Borge invited Mr. Hambro to join him for a two-month engagement in Las Vegas.
"That's all my husband had to hear," said Barbara Hambro, noting that her husband was an expert at poker, "gambled all over the world" and was banned from several casinos. "He always needed a live audience. His essence was the personality of a performer."
For 10 years, Borge and Mr. Hambro toured the world, perfecting a routine that cemented Borge's stature as the finest musical comedian of the 20th century. Mr. Hambro endured all kinds of impish mischief as Borge interrupted his playing, struggled with microphones and kept up a stream of comical commentary.
It was Mr. Hambro, though, who had the idea for one of Borge's most celebrated musical pranks, a four-hand version of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. With their hands and arms intertwining over the keyboard, the dueling pianists wrestled each other to the floor without missing a note of the spirited tune.
"Everything was improvised," Barbara Hambro said. "They never, ever rehearsed."
Mr. Hambro was born June 26, 1920, in Chicago and "learned to play piano by sitting on his father's knee," his wife said.
Mr. Hambro's father, a Russian immigrant who was a pianist for silent movies, wrote the names of musical works on cards, then asked his son to draw a card and play the piece from memory. Throughout his life, Mr. Hambro printed musical titles on decks of cards, which he used to organize his practice sessions. Besides his expertise at cards, he often played chess -- once with Bobby Fischer.
Mr. Hambro studied for five years at Juilliard, where he later served on the faculty, and was a musician in the Navy during World War II. He won prestigious awards, played in chamber groups and became a radio musician, which required him to perform in different settings each week.
In 1952, substituting for an ailing pianist, Mr. Hambro had 24 hours to learn a demanding piano concerto by German composer Paul Hindemith. After the successful performance, Hindemith pronounced Mr. Hambro's feat "a miracle."
He was chosen by the son of Bela Bartok to record the composer's complete piano works and also made recordings with the Juilliard String Quartet and violinists Oscar Shumsky and Josef Szigeti. After working with Borge in the 1960s, Mr. Hambro occasionally performed with another musical jokester, Peter Schickele, also known as P.D.Q. Bach.
In 1970, Mr. Hambro moved to California, where he led the piano department at the California Institute of the Arts for more than 20 years and had a weekly radio program. He also played and taught at chamber music festivals in Colorado and Florida for several years.
In 1984, he formed the Hambro Quartet of Pianos, a group of "tremendous finger-wigglers" with which he toured for 15 years. He continued to teach master piano classes and to give musical talks and performances until last month.
"My attempt is, like a missionary, to get people to hear Mozart and Bach so they can see they are not so bad after all," Mr. Hambro said.
In addition to his wife of 55 years, of New York, survivors include a son, Simeon Hambro of Minneapolis; a sister; and a granddaughter. A daughter, Aralee Hambro, died in 1995.