This pianist lady is probably the most hardworking person in the world-İDİL BİRET

Imagine you are now 78, and you have spent all your life starting from your age 2 by working a minimum 10 hours a day and sleeping only few hours

I feel the need to write about İdil Biret, especially after my conversation with my little brother who had no idea about who she was when I asked him. İdil Biret may be old now (age 78), but she is one of the most important pianists of our century and I feel sorry when a Turkish citizen show no sign of familiarity when I mention her name.

She was a child prodigy who at the age 2 could already sing the melodies she heard. She started taking piano lessons when she was only 2.5 years old and she was so talented that the government decided to take care of her. When she was 9 years old, at 1948, Turkish Government passed a law on her name to provide a good musical education abroad for her and all the prospective child prodigies. She was sent to Paris in 1949 by the government and İdil Biret didn't spend a single minute without working and practising since then.

In her documentary and various interviews, she says she wouldn't work less then 10 hours a day and 14 hours a day sometimes if she is being prepared for an album recording. She is the only artist in music history to record all the piano works of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven and Brahms. Even for a virtuoso pianist, each one of those projects would take forever, but she recorded them all and she has over 130 albums. There is so much more to write about her of course but I think you should really watch her documentary which became available for streaming online during Corona days to see what happens when a genius and extreme hard work come together: