Erika Lux

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Erika Lux in June 2016 at the summer party organized by Andor Izsák and the Friends of Hanover for the Week of Brotherhood in the Villa Seligmann

Erika Lux (born December 25, 1946 in Budapest ) is a Hungarian-German pianist . With her playing, she gained an international reputation, particularly as an interpreter of Hungarian music and works by the composer Franz Liszt .

Life

Born in Budapest, Hungary, shortly after the Second World War , Erika Lux began playing the piano at the age of three. Just two years later she made her first public appearance and at the age of twelve gave a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto in F major, KV 459 . Around 1963, Lux began studying music in her hometown at the age of 16 at the Franz Liszt Music Academy , which she graduated with summa cum laude and the “Grand Prix”.

At the age of 19 Erika Lux was one of the winners of the Liszt Bartók Music Competition held in Budapest in 1966 . The award was the beginning of a whole series of honors, "including top prizes at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich , the Debussy Competition in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, his birthplace, and the Madame Butterfly Wordwide Piano Competition in Tokyo ". For her live concerts and recordings of works by Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofiev , among others , Lux received an award from the Hungarian Radio . The district of Augsburg awarded Lux ​​an art prize.

Erika Lux deepened her virtuoso playing in several master classes , including with Wilhelm Kempff , who described her interpretation of the Beethoven Sonata op. 101 as "a convincing representation of this difficult work in every respect".

On the 100th anniversary of Franz Liszt's death, the Bayerischer Rundfunk broadcast Erika Lux's “Liszt Recital” in 1986, with which she opened the concert series in honor of the composer with world premieres. Lux presented her playing of Liszt's rarely performed Opus 1, “the original version of the later Transcendental Etudes”, on the composer's 200th birthday as a compact disc , on which her transcriptions of Gellert's songs and Beethoven's Adelaide were also recorded. On the same occasion she performed solo in New York - there in the same year 2011 at the "Music Summer Festival" with members of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra - and also at the Bebersee Festival and the Euro Music Festival in Wuppertal .

Lux is the founding president of the German Liszt Society and was honored by the Hungarian government with the award of the Franz Liszt Medal .

Erika Lux has made guest appearances at the Salzburg Festival , in Flanders and Paris , has appeared with the Orchester de la Suisse Romande as well as with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo , the Tivoli Orchestra in Copenhagen , the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra , with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and the Dresden Philharmonic . At the 2000th anniversary of the city of Bonn , she performed Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1, C major, Op. 15 under the direction of Yehudi Menuhin in 1989 . At the Cuvilliés Theater in Munich she gave a concert with Peter Schreier with songs by Beethoven and Liszt piano transcriptions .

In 1990 Erika Lux was appointed full professor at what was then the University of Music and Theater in Hanover. Since then, Lux has sat on numerous competition juries , has given international masterclasses all over the world and has also led numerous courses and competitions for the prima vista game .

As an interpreter of Hungarian music, Erika Lux gave concerts “in Paris, London, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, the former Soviet Union, Norway, Poland, Japan and Cuba”. When the Bayerischer Rundfunk hosted the memorial concert for the composer on the occasion of the transfer of Bartók's remains from New York to Budapest in 1988, Erika Lux performed as soloist together with singer Julia Hamari . On the 50th anniversary of Bartók Erika Lux played in 1995 together with the NDR Radio Philharmonic , the 3rd Piano Concerto of Bela Bartok. Numerous other television and radio companies in Europe and overseas have also made recordings with Erika Lux. Numerous recordings with works by Bartók, Brahms, Haydn, Liszt, Ravel and Scriabin are available on the Hungarian record label Hungaroton .

Erika Lux transcribed songs by Hugo Wolf for piano and premiered a work dedicated to her by Robert Wittinger in the Palazzo Ricci in Montepulciano in 2004 .

Erika Lux at the concert grand for Andor Izsák's 72nd birthday (behind her left), in the background on the right Marion and Claudio Esteban Seleguan

In many cases, investigated the Catholic baptized Erika Lux, the 1983 Andor Izsák had married, the founder of the in Hanover established European Center for Jewish Music in the Villa Seligmann , "specifically for unjustly forgotten compositions mainly Jewish composers" whose works then, for example, 2001 performed at the Jewish Festival in Budapest. In 2005 the Schumann Hall in Düsseldorf and in 2008 the Berlin Philharmonic performed the Jewish composers rediscovered by Lux. In Berlin Lux played the Hebrew Rhapsody by Louis Lewandowski , which she had rediscovered , and gave concerts in the Bösendorfer Hall in Paris with piano works by Charles Valentin Alkan .

The research results of Erika Lux include the multi-layered oeuvre of Moritz and Alexander Moszkowski , including the performance of Valse brillante for eight hands or the world premiere of the parody of the Faust scene titled Anton Notenquetscher with actor Alexander May . For the 150th birthday of Moritz Moszkowski, Erika Lux performed his piano concerto in E major op. 59 in his native city of Breslau (today: Wrocław ) , as well as her own fiftieth piano concerto.

Lux is also involved in solo literature, piano concertos and chamber music by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel ; According to Erika Lux, their implementation as impressionistic coloring with the piano is one of the "greatest pianistic challenges".

The Hungarian Tourist Board placed Lux ​​in the series of Famous Hungarians .

Media coverage (selection)

  • Thorsten Schirmer (responsible): piano recital with Erika Lux / special classical concert in St. Martini in Brelingen , article in the weekly newspaper Echo from April 28, 2010; online edition

Web links

Commons : Erika Lux  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Erika Lux / Born 25 December 1946 on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website , last accessed on June 25, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Erika Lux: Pianist , autobiography on her website erikalux.de , last accessed on June 25, 2016
  3. ↑ István Raies: Liszt Bartók Music Competition 1966 in Budapest  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , as a PDF document on the degruyter.com website , last accessed on June 25, 2016@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.degruyter.com  
  4. ↑ Beate Roßbach: Hanover / Harmony and Persistence. In: Jüdische Allgemeine . Weekly newspaper for politics, culture, religion and Jewish life from December 1, 2011, online transcript, last accessed on June 25, 2016
  5. ^ Hugo Thielen : European Center for Jewish Music. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 167.
  6. ↑ Balázs Kovács: Famous Hungarians on the website of the Hungarian Tourism Office, Representation Austria, last accessed on June 25, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Lux, Erika
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-German pianist
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest