Malcolm Frager (1935-1991) came to the attention of the concert-going public after winning the world's most important and toughest competitions in rapid succession - the Leventrift in 1959 and the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium in 1960. He followed these achievements with a busy international career which, in the span of 30 years, took him across the globe and to the world's most important musical venues.

In 1957, Frager graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University with a major in Russian. He was fluent in seven languages, a skill that would serve him well throughout his career. Fragers uniqueness lay in his uncompromising approach to music making. He was among the most learned and probing of thinkers and sought above all to reveal as faithfully as possible the authentic voice of each composer. This involved the careful study of the printed score, especially of first editions and original manuscripts. Frager's own library (now housed at the Sibley Library Special Collections at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York) is a model for the scholarly musician.

In 1979, Frager visited the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow, Poland where he convinced librarians to make available a cache of more than one thousand original manuscripts missing and believed lost since World War II. The collection included masterpieces of Bach, Beethoven and Schumann, and the largest body of Mozart autographs in existence. In 1987, Frager received the Golden Mozart Pin from the International Mozart Foundation in Salzburg for uncovering this collection.

Frager's career was the product of an incorruptible vision and an iron-willed search for the truth. Toward that end, he performed only that repertoire that was meaningful tø him. Frager never wearied of searching for musical truths, and over the years his playing remained fresh and vital. He recorded infrequently but consistently, interpreting many standard works of the Classic and Romantic repertory. His natural curiosity ensured that his choice of repertoire remained wholly original and even unpredictable. He enjoyed performing lesser-known works of the masters, and his imagination ensured that his interpretations, even of familiar works, sprang to life with fresh insights and compelling depth of feeling.ā1