Blanche Honegger

Blanche Honegger-Moyse (born September 23, 1909 in Geneva , † February 10, 2011 in Brattleboro ) was a Swiss - American violinist and conductor.

Life

At the age of eight, Honegger began taking lessons from Adolf Busch . At the age of 16 she won first prize in the violin category at the Conservatoire de musique de Genève . A subsequent performance of Beethoven's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major with the Orchester de la Suisse Romande under Fritz Busch was enthusiastically received by the audience. In 1939 she married the French flautist and composer Louis Moyse ; the marriage resulted in four children. Together with her husband on the piano and her father-in-law Marcel Moyse on the flute, the violinist formed the Moyse Trio, which has been frenetically celebrated since the 1930s .

After the Second World War , Blanche Honegger and her family first came to Argentina , but then settled in Brattleboro in the US state of Vermont , where, among others, she and her husband, her mentor Adolf Busch and his son-in-law Rudolf Serkin started the Marlboro School of 1951 Music and the Marlboro Music Festival. In 1952 she founded the Brattleboro Music Center .

After a disease of the elbow joint , Honegger had to give up playing the violin in the mid-1960s and from then on concentrated on conducting. She was particularly interested in the chorale works by Johann Sebastian Bach , and with Louis Moyse she is also one of the initiators of the New England Bach Festival . In 1987, at the age of 78, she conducted Bach's Christmas Oratorio at Carnegie Hall in New York . She was one of the most important connoisseurs of Johann Sebastian Bach's music in the USA, Japan , France and Switzerland.

Web links

• Vita and photos of Blanche Honegger on the Bach Cantatas website ( English )