André Tchaikowsky

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André Tchaikowsky (also Andrzej Czajkowski or André Tchaikovsky ; born November 1, 1935 in Warsaw as Robert Andrzej Krauthammer ; † June 26, 1982 in Oxford ) was a Polish composer and pianist .

Life

Robert Andrzej Krauthammer showed great musical talent as a child; his mother taught him to play the piano when he was four. The Jewish family was deported to the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazi German occupying power in 1940. In 1942 the six-year-old was smuggled out of the ghetto under the name Andrzej Czajkowski with the help of forged papers . He kept this name until the end of his life, even if he later chose André Tchaikowsky as the spelling . From then on, Tchaikowsky lived in hiding with his grandmother Celina until they were arrested in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and - as non-Jewish Polish citizens - in the Pruszków transit campwere abducted. They were freed from this in 1945. Tchaikowsky's father Karl Krauthammer also survived the Holocaust . His mother Felicja Krauthammer (née Rappaport) was deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942 and murdered there.

Tchaikowsky resumed piano lessons in Łódź in 1945 at the age of nine. His teacher was Emma Altberg, a student of Wanda Landowska . From Łódź he went to Paris, where he was tutored by Lazare Lévy . During this time he broke off contact with his father for a long time after an argument.

After his return to Poland in 1950, he studied at the State Music Academy in Sopot with Olga Iliwicka-Dąbrowska and later at the State Music Academy in Warsaw with Stanisław Szpinalski . During his studies he started his concert career, played a. a. Bach's Goldberg Variations and Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 and surprised his audience with improvisations on spontaneously given themes. From 1951 he studied composition with Kazimierz Sikorski .

After Tchaikowsky had won the 8th prize at the fifth International Chopin Competition in 1955, he went to Brussels to study with the internationally successful Polish pianist Stefan Askenase . In 1956 he won the 3rd prize there at the Concours Musical Reine Elisabeth .

In 1957 Tchaikowsky performed all of Maurice Ravel's piano works in a concert series in Paris . During this time he was advised by Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau on compositional questions and also maintained contacts with the pianist Arthur Rubinstein .

Despite his success as a pianist, Tchaikowsky's greatest passion was composing. He wrote a piano concerto, a string quartet, a piano trio, a setting of seven Shakespeare sonnets for voice and piano and several solo works for piano. He began working on an opera, a setting of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice . Several of his own recordings of his works have been published by EMI. For RCA Red Seal and Columbia Masterworks he recorded piano works by Bach (Goldberg Variations), Haydn (two sonatas, Variations in F minor), Mozart (Concerto in C major, two sonatas and a few other piano works), Schubert (Waltz, Landler, German Dances) Chopin (15 Mazurken) and Fauré (piano quartet in C minor).

In 1982 he died in Oxford of complications from colon cancer .

Tchaikowsky's skull

André Tchaikowsky bequeathed his body to medical research as a body donation ; However, he donated his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company with the request that it be used as a stage prop . He hoped that his skull would be used as Yorick's skull in Hamlet . For a long time, the skull was only occasionally used in rehearsals, as actors and directors could not get used to the idea. In 2008, however, Tchaikowsky's skull was used in a number of performances at the Courtyard Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon by the actor of Hamlet, David Tennant . When this became known through press reports, the RSC announced that it would no longer bring the skull onto the stage in production, which had since moved to the West End , out of consideration for the audience. However, contrary to this announcement, it was still used and was also seen in the following television adaptation on BBC Two . Director Gregory Doran said that Tchaikovsky's skull was a very important part of his Hamlet production and, despite all the media hype, he meant a lot to the ensemble.

Works

  • Sonata for clarinet and piano, op. 1 (1959)
  • Inventions for piano, op. 2 (1961–1962)
  • String Quartet No. 1 in A major, op. 3 (1969–1970)
  • Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 4 (1966–1971)
  • String Quartet No. 2 in C major, op. 5 (1973–1975)
  • The Merchant of Venice ( The Merchant of Venice ), opera based on Shakespeare (1968-1982), premiered at the Bregenz Festival , 18 July 2013

literature

  • David A Ferré: André Tchaikovsky , in: Music and Musicians , December 1985
  • André Tchaikowsky: The daily effort to be human. Biography and diaries of the Jewish-Polish musician and composer . Anastasia Belina-Johnson (editor), Wolfram Boder (translator). Wolke, Hofheim 2013, ISBN 978-3-95593-054-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c David A. Ferré: Summary Biography . In: André Tchaikowsky website . Retrieved December 2, 2009.
  2. ^ Weinberger Music Biography of Tchaikowsky . JW Music Publishers. Archived from the original on December 18, 2007. Retrieved January 10, 2008.
  3. ↑ Malgorzata Kosinska: Andrzej Czajkowski . In: culture.pl Profiles . Adam Mickiewicz Institute. October 2006. Archived from the original on July 1st, 2009. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved December 2, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.culture.pl
  4. ↑ Elena Lappin: 'The Woman From Hamburg': The One Who Survived . In: The New York Times , June 26, 2005. Retrieved January 10, 2008. 
  5. ↑ David A. Ferré: Story of the Skull . In: André Tchaikowsky website . 1991, 2009. Retrieved December 2, 2009.
  6. ↑ bequeathed skull stars in Hamlet . BBC News . November 26, 2008. Retrieved November 26, 2008.
  7. ↑ 'Hamlet' trades real skull for fake . December 4, 2008. Retrieved December 2, 2009. 
  8. ↑ a b David Tennant to revive partnership with real skull for BBC's Hamlet . In: The Daily Telegraph , November 24, 2009. Retrieved December 2, 2009. 
  9. ↑ The history of the Bregenz Festival - 2013: The Merchant of Venice chronik.bregenzerfestspiele.net
personal data
SURNAME Tchaikowsky, André
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Czajkowski, Andrzej; Tchaikovsky, André; Krauthammer, Robert Andrzej (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish composer and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH June 26, 1982
Place of death Oxford