Brigitte Engerer

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Brigitte Engerer, 2009

Brigitte Engerer [briˈʒit ɑ̃ʒəˈrɛːr] (born October 27, 1952 in Tunis ; † June 23, 2012 in Paris ) was a French pianist.

life and career

Brigitte Engerer was born in Tunisia, then France, where her father was a civil servant. She began taking piano lessons at the age of four and had her first public concert at the age of six. When she was ten, she won her first music competition, the Prix ​​du Tournoi du Royaume de la musique . The family moved to France when she was eleven years old. There she studied at the Paris Conservatory as a student of Lucette Descaves and in the chamber music class of Jean Hubeau .

In 1969 she won the 6th prize at the “Concours international Marguerite-Long-Jacques-Thibaud”. She was then invited to Moscow by Stanislaw Neuhaus , who taught at the Moscow Conservatory . Even after completing her music studies, she stayed in Moscow for the following years and continued taking lessons from Neuhaus. In 1974 she took part in the Tchaikovsky Competition , which that year was composed of Andrei Gawrilow , Myung-whun Chung , Andras Schiff and Dmitri Alexejew , and received 6th prize. In 1978 she won the Concours Musical Reine Elisabeth , which was followed by a series of concert invitations. Among other things, she has given concerts with the Orchester de Paris under the direction of Kirill Kondraschin . In 1980 she returned to France.

Engerer's international breakthrough came in the same year at a concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker , to which she had invited Herbert von Karajan after she had played him Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy in Belgium . In 1982 she played with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Mstislaw Rostropovich . She made her debut at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1983 under Václav Neumann with the B flat minor concerto by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky . A concert tour with Boris Berezovsky took her from France to Spain and Russia in 2010, where she gave a guest appearance at the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Concert Hall .

In the course of her career she has a. a. worked with the conductors Daniel Barenboim , Gary Bertini , Herbert von Karajan , Zubin Mehta and Seiji Ozawa . Brigitte Engerer cultivated chamber music throughout her career as a piano soloist. She performed a. a. with Oleg Maisenberg , Olivier Charlier , David Geringas , Dmitri Sitkowetski , Henri Demarquette, Boris Beresowski, Régis Pasquier and Gérard Caussé. 

Brigitte Engerer's first marriage to the writer Yann Queffélec , her second marriage to Xavier Fourteau, she has a daughter and a son. She died of longstanding cancer in Paris at the age of 59 and was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery (11th Division).

Appreciations

Brigitte Engerer is one of the great interpreters of piano music, especially of the 19th century. Her Chopin and Liszt recordings combine virtuosity and deeply felt passion with absolute naturalness in musical expression. She succeeds in showing how, in the music of these two greatest exponents of virtuoso piano music, virtuosity is part of the musical expression and not an external ingredient that it often appears as in other performers. Brigitte Engerer is far less well known in Germany than in France, although her interpretations of the German Romantics such as Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann have reference character.

In her obituary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine , Eleonore Büning attests to Engerer that, despite her Tunisian-French roots, she is actually one of Neuhaus's last grandchildren , and that her piano art bears the “stamp of the best Russian stamp: brilliant technology, combined with romantic esprit, and deeply felt Sentiment ".

Quote

"I need the transparency of the French piano - and, more important, the rationality of French philosophy. But I needed some of the Russian craziness in my playing. I still do. "(" I need the transparency of the French piano - and, more importantly, the rationality of French philosophy. But I need some of the Russian madness in my playing. Still. ") Interview with the Washington Times , 1992 (quoted in the New York Times ).

Prizes and awards

Movies

In 2012, the French director Benjamin Bleton shot a film portrait of the pianist, in which he describes the important turning points in her life and the encounters with friends and musicians who have shaped her career, as well as her interest in chamber music. The film also shows excerpts from her last concert two weeks before her death, which she gave together with Boris Berezovsky in the Salle Pleyel in Paris.

Brigitte Engerer has appeared in various films and television series. In Sophie Laloy's psychological thriller Je te mangerais ( You will be mine ) from 2009, she is admired by the protagonist Mary, who studies at the Paris Conservatory, who has her photos and listens to her piano music. She plays herself in one episode each of the series Vie privée, vie publique and Ce soir (ou jamais!) .

Discography (selection)

  • Ludwig van Beethoven : For Elise and Sonata, op.110. Harmonia Mundi 1991
  • Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonatas Nos. 7, 8 & 9 "Kreutzer" . With Olivier Charlier . Harmonia Mundi 1996
  • Johannes Brahms : Liebeslieder-Waltz / Hungarian Dances for piano four hands , op.52a. With Boris Berezovsky . Mirare France 2011
  • Johannes Brahms: A German Requiem , op. 45. With Sandrine Piau , soprano, Stéphane Degout , Brigitte Enderer and Boris Beresowski, piano.
  • Frédéric Chopin : The Complete Nocturnes . Harmonia Mundi 2010
  • Frédéric Chopin: Oeuvres pour piano . Decca 2011
  • Louise Farrenc : Musique de chambre . With Brigitte Engerer, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger and Philippe Bernol. 2005
  • Edvard Grieg : Sonatas pour violin et piano . With Olivier Charlier. Harmonia Mundi
  • Franz Liszt : Harmonies poétiques et religieuses . Hyperion UK 2004
  • Franz Liszt: Via crucis . Version for choir and piano. Accentus Choir , conducted by Laurence Equilbey
  • Modest Mussorgsky : Pictures at an Exhibition. The night on Bald Mountain . Harmonia Mundi 2009
  • Sergei Rachmaninow : Œuvres pour deux pianos et piano à quatre mains. With Oleg Maisenberg . Harmonia Mundi
  • Sergei Rachmaninov: Suites for two pianos . With Boris Berezovsky. Mirare France
  • Maurice Ravel : Works for Violin and Piano . With Régis Pasquier. Harmonia Mundi
  • Franz Schubert : Impromptu, Wanderer Fantasy ; Franz Liszt: songs . Mirare France 2008
  • Clara Schumann : Piano Concerto . Cannes Regional Orchestra, conducted by Philippe Bender. L'Empreinte digital 2007
  • Robert Schumann : Carnaval, children's scenes. Harmonia Mundi
  • Robert Schumann: Œuvres pour piano . Decca
  • Robert Schumann. Violin Sonatas , op. 105 & 121. With Olivier Charlier. Harmonia Mundi
  • Children's Album, 24 easy pieces for Piano , op.39.
  • Trésors de Russie / Treasures of Russia . (Rachmaninov: Vespers ; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Brigitte Engerer. In: Daily Telegraph . June 25, 2012 (obituary).
  2. ^ A b Eleonore Büning: On the death of the pianist Brigitte Engerer: Best school. In: FAZ.net . July 17, 2012, accessed November 30, 2018 .
  3. ^ Margalit Fox: Brigitte Engerer, Pianist with Singular Style, Dies at 59. In: New York Times . June 29, 2012 (obituary).
  4. ↑ Tribute to Brigitte Enderer. A Portrait of the Great Pianist by Karl More. In: Medici.tv , accessed on October 3, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Engerer, Brigitte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French pianist
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Tunis
DATE OF DEATH June 23, 2012
Place of death Paris