William Kapell was born in New York City on September 20, 1922, and grew up in the eastside neighborhood of Yorkville, Manhattan, where his parents owned a Lexington Avenue bookstore.

Kapell won his first competition at the age of ten and received as a prize a turkey dinner with the pianist José Iturbi.

[7] Kapell achieved fame while in his early twenties, in part as a result of his performances of Aram Khachaturian's Piano Concerto in D-flat.

Besides his pianism and technical gifts, Kapell's attractive appearance and mop of black hair helped make him a favorite with the public.

[7] By the late 1940s, Kapell had toured the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia to acclaim and praised as the most brilliant and audacious of his generation of young American pianists.

[citation needed] While his technique was exceptional, he was a versatile musician, and was impatient with what he considered shallow or sloppy music making.

He also set aside time from his busy concert schedule to work with the musicians he most admired, including Artur Schnabel, Pablo Casals, and Rudolf Serkin.

Three months prior, in May, he allegedly told Anthony Harris, a pianist from Sacramento who he had dinner with, that he was suffering from cancer and that the doctors had given him two years to live.

[13] Kapell played the final concert of his Australian tour in Geelong, Victoria, on October 22, 1953, a recital which included a performance of Chopin's "Funeral March" Sonata.

[15] He was aboard BCPA Flight 304 when on the morning of October 29, 1953, the plane, descending to land in fog, struck the treetops and crashed on Kings Mountain, south of the San Francisco airport.

[19] Pianists including Eugene Istomin, Gary Graffman, Leon Fleisher and Van Cliburn have acknowledged Kapell's influence.

[20] Kapell's widow, Anna Lou Dehavenon (1926–2012), undertook a career as an expert on homelessness in New York in part as a result, she said, of her own experience of suddenly becoming a single mother with no income.

A 9 CD set released by RCA Victor in 1998 contains Kapell's complete authorized recordings, including renditions of Chopin's mazurkas and sonatas as well as concertos by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Khatchaturian.

1, and it includes Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which also appears in the RCA Victor set, as well as on VAI 1048, the last from an Australian recital of July 21, 1953.

Included are several previously unknown performances of "God Save the Queen", Debussy's Suite bergamasque, Chopin's Barcarolle, Op.