I don't remember when I first became aware of Christopher Falzone's recordings on YouTube, but it wasn't very long ago. I watched his performance of his own arrangement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 for solo piano – a feat so extraordinary that I wouldn't have believed it possible if I hadn't seen it for myself. I could scarce believe he had also arranged Rach 3, though I hadn't seen his performance until today, and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, which I'm watching for the first time even as I write this, for solo piano. He never wrote down any of his transcriptions, according to comments on the videos, though I have no way of verifying this assertion. As if these monumental musical feats weren't enough to create a most gilded résumé, the video description on all his videos states that he was a protegé of none other than Martha Argerich, one of the most celebrated classical pianists of this age and all time.
From his mien and visage, you get no indication that Christopher Falzone is playing before an audience, though he is clearly in a modest concert hall of some sort, which, judging by the scattered applause that rings out, echoing rather dismally off the poorly soundproofed walls, is not packed from wall to wall. Falzone plays with nobility and an utter absence of artifice. None of the showiness of Lang Lang or Trifonov. No extraneous movements calculated to increase the drama of the performance. The views on these videos, nearly 9 years after they were posted, number only in the thousands. One begins to appreciate the role luck plays in propelling a person to stardom; talent alone does not suffice. It's impossible to say how Christopher Falzone will be remembered a century from now. Perhaps his star will shine the more brightly as the craze surrounding his more celebrated contemporaries fades. History has no shortage of incredible persons whom fame and fortune eluded during their lifetimes.
Christopher Falzone died in October 2014 at the age of 29. He took his own life by jumping from the tenth floor of a hospital in Geneva, where he had been committed, allegedly, against his will. This was at least his fourth attempt. A letter purportedly written by him on a GoFundMe campaign, reproduced on this online journal article, claims that his estranged parents had gotten a court to declare him an incapacitated person and as a result had legal power over his person; only his wife Lily was on his side. A series of videos posted by one Alla Aranovskaya shows a wheelchair-bound Falzone playing the piano at a nursing home in the early months of 2014. The description on one of them notes: "Christopher Falzone playing his Tchaikovsky Trio transcription. who else can do this????. By the Pennsylvania Court in Philadelphia on May 30 he was named incapacitated person !!!! I wish to be that incapacitated!!!!How American court can It's worst than Stalin regime. Please, help me find contact in news paper and TV to help Chris to come back to the normal live. He deserves more than miserable live in mental house or nursing home. See what despotic and tyrannical parents and heartlessness of surrounding can do to any of us, musicians, artists, composers, actors and other artistic persons." – echoing the tone and content of the GoFundMe letter. Knowing how Falzone's story ended, it seemed that here was another child prodigy who had been wrung dry by avaricious parents like a towel. You'd expect this kind of drama to happen in the 1940s, in the depraved golden years of Hollywood; not in 2014. Although there are far more counterexamples to this than just Falzone. Think of Michael Jackson and Brittney Spears.
As the erratum on the article notes, the most striking thing about the letter that casts doubt on its authenticity is the non-standard English. Christopher Falzone was an American. Here he is with a flawless American accent in this interview from 1994. In the Tchaikovsky video from 2013, he talks to the audience about the art of transcription. It takes you a second to place his accent. His ts seem noticeably softer than the average American's – almost European. The American accent eventually comes through, but it takes a good few minutes for it to become apparent. Perhaps he had lived long enough in Europe during his formative years that it had left a mark on his accent. Something in his style of speaking and his volubility (somewhat Gould-esque) perhaps hints at his being bipolar; or perhaps I, knowing what I know now, am conditioned to look for such signs even if they're not there.
There is precious little about Falzone's life or death on the Internet. I believe he has been the victim of not being famous enough in an age when people take the memory of the Internet for granted and don't go out of their way to record things of note. Talk about irony. There is likely no forgotten information about him out there that can be expected to rise to the surface as the wind blows away the sands under which it has been buried. This blog post is one of the few sources of information on Falzone's tragic decline and demise that I've been able to find. It's well worth a read, so I won't paraphrase any of it here. Someday, someone might find it worth their while to write a book about Falzone. I'll be the first to buy it.
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