PORTUGUESE KEYBOARD MUSIC: Vol. 1 Felicja Blumental, piano The legacy of a great musician can live on in many ways. Most musicians of our century have bequeathed to posterity recordings of their playing; many, like Nadia Reisenberg, have passed on their musical expertise to their students; a good number, like Artur Rubinstein, have founded competitions during their lifetimes or, like Géza Anda, have been commemorated by them after their death; a very few, like Sir Yehudi Menuhin, have established schools where their musical ideals may be inculcated in future generations. The great pianist Felicja Blumental is no exception, and it is the purpose of the present article to examine the ways in which her legacy continues to enrich the lives of all who love music. Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1908, Felicja Blumental was surrounded by music from earliest childhood. Her father was a violinist, and her sister Sofia a singer. She began her formal piano training at the age of five with Józef Goldberg, and first appeared before the public at the age of ten, thus inaugurating a career which was to span seven decades and three continents. Her musical education continued at the National Conservatory in Warsaw where she was a scholarship student of renowned pedagogue Zbigniew Drzewiecki, a founder and president of the Chopin Competition. Her teacher in composition was Karol Szymanowski. Later she studied privately in Switzerland with Józef Turczynski, co-editor with Paderewski and Bronarski of the PWM edition of Chopin"s complete works. Blumental"s contact with Turczynski places her firmly within the Polish tradition of Chopin playing. Indeed, Blumental"s affinity with the music of Chopin was noted early in her career by F. Brzezinski, critic of the Wieczór Warszawski, who wrote of her performance at the Chopin Competition, "I would have created a prize for her for the best interpretation of Chopin"s Mazurkas". In 1928 Blumental met her husband-to-be, Markus Mizne, in the southern Polish mountain resort of Zakopane. Markus was to play a key role in Blumental"s career as a stalwart supporter, and producer of many of her records. They were married in Warsaw in 1935. In 1938 the couple moved to Nice. This year also saw the first signs of open hostility towards Jews in Europe with the events of Kristallnacht, in which Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship were attacked. On the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War, therefore, Markus obtained a visa to travel to Brazil, where he was joined by his wife and their newly-born daughter, Annette Céline, in 1940. For this visit Blumental was only able to obtain a two-week artists" visa, but as they received news of the horrors taking place in Europe, the family decided they must remain in Brazil. Blumental subsequently obtained Brazilian citizenship, which she retained for the rest of her life. She soon assumed a major role in the musical life of her adopted country, and became closely associated with the interpretation of the piano works of Villa-Lobos and other Brazilian composers. Felicja Blumental spent much time pioneering the revival of "forgotten masterpieces" from the Romantic and Classical periods and many premiere recordings of forgotten composers.