Musician. Edwin Fischer, a Swiss classical pianist and conductor, received recognition as one of the greatest interpreters in the 20th century of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart on a piano's keyboard. During the 1930s, he was the first to record many pieces of classical music, including being the first pianist to make a complete recording of Bach's Das wohltemperierte Klavier in 1933. By the 21st Century's standards, the pioneer recordings are lacking, hence his grand musical performances have been lost. Born the son of musicians, he began piano lessons at age four. When he was ten, he entered the Conservatory, studying with the composer Hans Huber. When he was eighteen, his father died. His mother wanted his musical training to continue, hence she relocated to Berlin, Germany, where he studied at the Stern Conservatory, making his debut with the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Eugen d'Albert. D'Albert was greatly impressed with the young pianist, offering advice with his career. After a period of teaching at the Stern Conservatory, he performed in recitals, appearing with well-known conductors and then began to tour Europe and Britain giving limited concerts. In 1919 he married actress Eleonora von Mendelssohn, and the couple were divorced by 1925. In 1931 he succeeded Arthur Schnabel, who was Jewish and had to go into exile from Nazi Germany, as the director of the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, but leaving in 1935. In 1938 he made his Salzburg Festival debut with Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor K. 466. During World War II in 1942, he returned to Switzerland, teaching master-classes with some very promising students, such as Swedish pianist Margit Theorell, Helena Sa e Costa, and dozens of more. As an aging musician, he made radio performances, which have been recently made into CDs, but the tone of his youthful performances was not documented. During 1950, he performed a series of concerts throughout Europe to commemorate the bicentenary of Bach's death. In these concerts he played all the concertos for keyboard. He toured until 1954 when he stopped performing in public as he was suffering neuropathy in his fingers. He published a number of books on teaching the piano, as well as one on Beethoven's Piano Sonatas. His historically important recordings with the London Philharmonic Orchestra have been reissued on CD by EMI and specialty labels such as APR, Music and Arts, Pearl, and Testament. While making a recording, he became seriously ill, later sent to London for medical treatment, and died shortly afterward in Switzerland never returning to performing.