Guiomar Novaës

Guiomar Novaës (Novahes) and Claudio Arrau were the most celebrated pianists born in South America immediately before and after 1900: she in Brazil in 1895 (not 1896, as some biographies continue to list), he in Chile, in 1903. They were first to win international acclaim since Venezuelan-born Teresa Carreño (1853-1917), who had studied with Gottschalk. In São Paulo, where the family had moved from a provincial village soon after her birth, she revealed precocity at age four, and began studying at age seven with Luigi Chiafarelli, a Busoni pupil. He helped her developed the ba...