First coming to the United States from Havana upon winning the National Music Award Competition in 1945, he then received a personal scholarship by world famous artists Maestro
Claudio Arrau, and his assistant
Rafael De Silva, to study in the U.S. for a period of 10 years. He performed in the West Indies, Cuba, and the U.S., and appeared often on radio and television. He began his career as a pedagogue in 1948, taught winners of many prestigious competitions and juried just as many, such as the AMSA of Cincinnati, the Governor’s Award, the NYC Public High School Piano Competition, and the National Screening Committee of the Fulbright Awards.
Maestro Diez began his tenure at the Greenwich House Music School in 1950 and, since then, he has taught over 1,500 students. His influence can be seen in every aspect of the school’s operations, including the way it gauges student progress through recitals and end of year concerts. German elevated the school’s stature when he established the Piano Master Class Series over twenty years ago, which has featured renowned pianists, such as Joseph Bloch, Sam Sanders, Seymour Bernstein, David Dubal, Jeffrey Swann and Sara Davis Buechner. Among his students are Erica Nickrenz, of the Eroica Trio and recent Academy Award winning composer, Bobby Lopez. His teaching career also included courses and seminars at Bard College, Suny Purchase, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College. In 1997, Greenwich House Music School established the German Diez Piano Scholarship in his honor.
PROGRAM
The concert will feature an international cast of musicians and works by Cuban, Latin American, and European classical masters, including Bach, Brahms, Cervantes, Chopin, Roig, Schumann, Villa-Lobos, and others.
FOURTH UNIVERSALIST SOCIETY
160 Central Park West (@ 76th Street), NYC
FREE ADMISSION
RSVP at: cccofny@aol.com
This concert is presented with the sponsorship of Alexander Diez
and under the auspices of
School
of Music
And is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
With the promotional collaboration of
and 
A concert in tribute to the formidable pedagogical legacy of the late Cuban Maestro Germán Diez (1924-2014), chairman for almost half a century of the piano department at the Greenwich House Music School in Manhattan’s West Village.