Amadeus Schwarzkopf

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Amadeus Schwarzkopf at the age of six at the organ of the San Stefano church in Milan

Amadeus A. Schwarzkopf (born May 22, 1924 in Zurich ; † February 11, 2015 there ) was a Swiss pianist and piano teacher.

Life

Musical training and teaching

Amadeus A. Schwarzkopf was born in 1924 as the son of the sculptor and photographer Michael Schwarzkopf and the singer Vera Schwarzkopf-Rheingold. At the age of three he received piano lessons from his mother and, during a one-year stay in Milan, from Alessandro Riboli in piano and organ. At the age of six he played the organ at a wedding in the Chiesa San Stefano in Milan. At the age of eleven he came to Paris, where he continued his studies with Alfred Cortot (piano), Georges Dandelot (general music theory and music theory) and Nadia Boulanger (music history) at the École Normale de Musique de Paris . At the age of fourteen he passed the entrance exams to Magda Tagliaferro's master class (piano) at the Conservatoire National in Paris . In 1936 he appeared for the first time as a soloist in the Zurich Radio Beromünster studio , with works by Mendelssohn and Chopin . At the age of twelve and thirteen he gave his first two public piano recitals in Zurich. He studied in Paris until 1940 (Médaille for solfège and Premier accessit for piano). After returning to Switzerland as a result of the war, he continued his studies in 1941 with Paul Baumgartner at the Basel Conservatory . In 1942 he played the G major Piano Concerto of Beethoven with the Basel Orchestra Society under the direction of Hans Münch . In 1945 he completed his studies with a teaching and soloist diploma for piano. For the soloist diploma he played Chopin's Piano Concerto in E minor . A little earlier he performed the Concerto in E flat major by Franz Liszt , a few years later the Concerto in A major by Liszt.

Since completing his studies, he has worked as a piano teacher in Zurich. From 1954 to 1960 he worked at the Conservatory and the Musikhochschule Winterthur, from 1960 to about 1992 at the Conservatory and the Musikhochschule Zurich (both now combined in the Zurich University of the Arts ).

Concert career

Schwarzkopf has given numerous piano recitals and has appeared as a soloist in concerts with orchestras ( orchestra of the Tonhallegesellschaft Zurich , Winterthur City Orchestra , Zurich Chamber Orchestra ), under the direction of Robert F. Denzler , Victor Desarzens , Jean-Marie Auberson , Edmond de Stoutz , Christian Vöchting and others. Recitals, ballet accompaniments and chamber music concerts took him to numerous cities at home and abroad.

Schwarzkopf's repertoire mainly comprised classical-romantic music. He has also performed contemporary compositions, especially for Swiss composers such as Othmar Schoeck , Jean Binet and Hugo Pfister .

Works

  • Chants with piano accompaniment to texts by Peter Hall.
  • Music for Jacques Deval's play "The Luck of the Bad".

literature

  • Willi Schuh : Swiss Musicians Lexicon - Dictionnaire des Musiciens Suisses. Atlantis-Verlag, Zurich 1964.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary notice in the NZZ
  2. ^ Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt : Ferruccio Busoni : chronicle of a European . Calder & Boyars Verlag, London 1970, ISBN 0-7145-0234-0 , p. 216 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  3. ↑ Feuillets suisses de pédagogie musicale. Volume 116. Verlag Hug & Co., Zurich 1976, p. 477 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
personal data
SURNAME Schwarzkopf, Amadeus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schwarzkopf, Amadeus A.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss pianist and piano teacher
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 2015
Place of death Zurich