Charles Wadsworth Dies at 96

Charles Wadsworth, founding artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, in 1969, and often credited with the robust health of chamber music in this country, died on May 29 in at a medical facility on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He was 96.

Wadsworth, a pianist known for his southern charm, also introduced, directed, and hosted chamber music concerts for the Spoleto Festival in the U.S. from its founding in Charleston, S.C. (his choice of cities) in the late 1970s, until 2009, serving in a variety of capacities.

It was at Spoleto that he met his wife, Susan Popkin. Susan Wadsworth, who was the founder of Young Concert Artists, confirmed his death 

Charles Wadsworth hailed from Newman, GA; he attended the University of Georgia in Athens before heading to Juilliard, from which he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees. His connection to Spoleto began in 1959, when its director, Gian Carlo Menotti, invited him to oversee chamber music for his Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto. Wadsworth was just 30. The success of his work there led to an invitation in 1965 from composer William Schuman, then president of the nascent Lincoln Center, to come up with a chamber series. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) played its first concert on Sept. 11, 1969. On the program were Bach’s Trio Sonata in C, Schumann’s Dichterliebe, sung by Hermann Prey, and Schubert’s Two Cellos Quintet. Wadsworth was the pianist. 

Menotti wanted to replicate the Spoleto Festival in the U.S. and, in the late 1970s, called on Wadsworth to help him do so and create a chamber music series for what became known as the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. That series continues to this day, with twice daily concerts at the historic Dock Street Theater. 

“Wadsworth’s distinctive format required the audience’s unwavering trust in the series’ director,” states the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in his obituary.? “He announced programming only from the stage, which allowed him to highlight…emerging artists and to program daring repertoire without regard for box office pressures.” 

Works by such illustrious composers as Boulez, Barber, Leonard Bernstein, William Bolcom, and John Corgliano are among the 65 he commissioned for Spoleto and CMS; artists he brought into the limelight include Richard Goode, Paula Robison, Yo-Yo Ma, Peter Serkin, Pinchas Zukerman, and Jessye Norman, and the Emerson and the St. Lawrence String quartets, the latter of which became Spoleto’s quartet in residence. 

Wadsworth’s pianism was witnessed by assorted U.S. presidents, from Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, to Reagan, and he received numerous honorary degrees and awards. He retired from public performance in 2013.

See also: The New York Times

_{Photo credit: The Juilliard School}