Partners at home and on stage. (Misha & Cipa Dichter).(pianists )

Nearly every article about pianists Misha and Cipa Dichter begins with the story of two young pianists who fall in love while attending the Juilliard School of Music. Well, why fight the trend? With no apologies at all to the popularity of a love story, we will begin there, too:

Cipa Dichter was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, into a Polish-Russian family and began playing piano at age 3. An outstanding high school pianist, she performed with the Symphony Orchestra of Brazil at age 16. However, she was unsure of her career choice, as she found many subjects interesting and originally entered college in Brazil to major in sociology. Shortly after, she decided to turn to music for a career and came to the Juilliard School in New York to study.

Only six weeks later, she met a young pianist named Misha, who was at that time preparing to enter the International Tchaikovsky Competition. Each day, after his twelve-hour practice routine, the two pianists met to talk, and often, to play four-hand piano together. As the two young pianists fell in love, they kept their affection secret, because they feared Misha's teacher, Madame Rosina Lhevinne, would not approve. When Madame Lhevinne finally learned of the couple's affections, however, she was supportive and arranged for Cipa to change to her studio so the two could study together.

Misha Dichter was born in Shanghai of Jewish-Polish parents who had fled to China early in World War II. His childhood was spent in California, where the family moved when he was 2. A student of Lhevinne at Juilliard, he met Cipa in choir and courted her while preparing for the International Tchaikovsky Competition. Both the courtship and the competition were successful- he won the Silver Medal, launched his international performance career and planned a marriage.

Misha traces his musical lineage to the two great pianistic traditions of the twentieth century: the Russian romantic school, as personified by Lhevinne, and the German classical style, which was passed on to him by Aube Tzerko, a pupil of Artur Schnabel. He has performed with virtually all the world's major orchestras, performing the grand virtuoso compositions of Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, as well as works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms. His performances and recordings of music ranging from Mozart through Stravinsky have made him a favorite of audiences around the world. He is recorded on the Philips, RCA and MusicMasters labels. In 1998, Dichter was honored with the "Grand Prix International du Disque Liszt." Fanfare called his recording of Stravinsky's Piano Concerto "one of the few really important Stravinsky discs to come out in recent years."

The Dichter Duo

Misha and Cipa were married in 1967, shortly before their June 1968 graduation from Juilliard. During the first years of their marriage, Cipa traveled with Misha on his worldwide concert tours. Her playing was limited, even though the couple still found time to play four-hand music for recreation. Four years later, while she was pregnant with her first child, Gabriel, Misha was busy planning a Hollywood Bowl concert for the following year. Returning home one day, he informed Cipa he had programmed Mozart's Concerto in E-flat for Two Pianos, and that she was to perform with him!