Edith Picht-Axenfeld

Edith Picht-Axenfeld (born January 1, 1914 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † April 19, 2001 in Hinterzarten ) was a German harpsichordist , pianist and organist .

Life

Edith Axenfeld studied in Lugano , Basel and Berlin , among others with Anna Hirzel-Langenhan , whose method she represented, with Rudolf Serkin and at times with Albert Schweitzer , who taught her how to play the organ. At the 3rd International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1937 , where Alfred Hoehn was on the jury, she came in 6th place. Due to the Jewish origin of her family, she was partially banned from performing during the Nazi era .

Grave of Edith Picht-Axenfeld

She was married to the classical philologist and religious philosopher Georg Picht . Until her death she lived near Freiburg im Breisgau in Hinterzarten on the Birklehof . Her grave is in the Freiburg main cemetery in field 57d near the Mitscherlich chapel.

plant

In her solo activity, the focus of which was on the harpsichord music of Johann Sebastian Bach , his sons and the piano works of the Viennese Classic, she devoted herself to contemporary works (for example, together with her colleague Carl Seemann on two pianos). She was particularly fond of the romantics Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann . She always advocated contemporary music , e.g. B. for Isang Yun and Heinz Holliger .

As a professor, she worked as a piano teacher at the Freiburg University of Music . She participated in the congresses of the German section of the European Piano Teachers Association with contributions on the art of piano playing. She represented a spiritualized, meditative way of dealing with the piano, in which purely mechanical practice, including finger exercises and studies, had no place. In this conception of practice as an active meditation and the inclusion of the whole body as an instrument of music, she met the ideas of her colleague Jürgen Uhde .

One of her students, who later turned to conducting and composing, was Hans Zender .

Publications

Your records appeared u. A. at Deutsche Grammophon (JS Bach, Bartók), the Musical Heritage Society ( Goldberg Variations , 1968). Since the 1970s she recorded regularly for the Camerata Tokyo , a. A. the complete piano works by JS Bach, the Chopin etudes and Schubert's B flat major sonata. The Brahms Intermezzi op. 117, 118 and 119 (recorded by Kusatsu, August 30, 1996) were published in 2001 under the motto Last Piano Concert .

Honors

• 1980: Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Web links

• Works by and about Edith Picht-Axenfeld in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on the website of the Chopin Institute
• Died: Edith Picht-Axenfeld. In: Der Spiegel 18/2001. April 30, 2001, p. 222 , accessed June 10, 2019 . 
• Badische Zeitung , December 31, 2013, Johannes Adam: badische-zeitung.de: Edith Picht-Axenfeld, Bach's ambassador (January 3, 2014)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Teresa Löwe: Georg Picht and the Birklehof School in the post-war period (1946–1955) . Preparatory text for the meeting of the Altbirklehofer of the post-war generation from 19 to 22 May 2004. Berlin 2004, DNB  970838786 , p. 5 , urn : nbn: de: 0111-opus-26754 .