Watch this incredible footage of a five-year-old Ruth Slenczynska playing Beethoven back in 1930!
At the start of the video, she declares, “I’m going to play a Minuet in G major by Beethoven.”
92 years later, the pianist is set to release a new album titled My Life in Music, which is inspired by her personal connections with Sergei Rachmaninov as well as American composer Samuel Barber, who was her fellow student and friend.
Slenczynska is the last living pupil of the great Rachmaninov, and even heard Barber’s now world-famous Adagio for Strings in the classroom before it even had its title.