Fou Ts’ong, the first Chinese pianist to win global acclaim and success, has died aged 86 after contracting Covid-19.
Fou died on Monday in London, where he had been living since the 1950s.
His death was confirmed by Jianing Kong, a professor at the Royal College of Music and student of Fou’s.
Responding to the news on Tuesday, the renowned Chinese pianist Lang Lang described Fou as “a truly great pianist, and our spiritual beacon”.
Fou was born in China in 1934 to a family of China’s intellectual elite. He first heard western classical music at a young age when his father, the renowned translator Fu Lei, returned to China after several years living in France.
As a budding pianist, he studied with the founder and head of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Italian conductor Mario Paci, who had been crucial in bringing western classical music to China.
Aged 19, Fou left China to continue his musical education in Europe, moving to then-Communist Poland to study in Warsaw. Two years later, he won awards and international recognition at the prestigious Chopin competition in the city.
In 1959, Fou moved to London and grew into an internationally acclaimed soloist, playing both in Europe and the United States, and performing in 1967 at the BBC’s First Night of the Proms.
In 1960 he had married Zamira Menuhin, the daughter of the renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The couple had a son and divorced in 1969. Fou later married the Chinese pianist Patsy Toh and had another son.
While he was living in London, Fou’s parents were persecuted in Maoist China during the anti-intellectual Cultural Revolution. They took their own lives in 1966.
