Evi Liivak

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Evi Liivak (born May 7, 1924 in Viljandi , † November 1, 1996 in New York City ) was an American violinist of Estonian origin.

Life

Liivak was born as the daughter of the music-loving lawyer Henn Liivak and his wife Johanna. She received violin lessons at an early age and studied at the Tallinn Conservatory . At the age of eleven she played Mendelssohn's violin concerto with the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra . In the following year she performed with the Estonian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Tallinn with Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto . In 1937 she was a member of the Estonian delegation at the Concours Musical Reine Elisabeth in Brussels.

After graduating in 1939, she received a Maggini violin from the Estonian dictator Konstantin Päts and a state scholarship to study violin with Ede Zathureczky at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest. In the meantime, her homeland was initially annexed by the Soviet Union and reoccupied after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Her father was killed by the Gestapo and she returned to Estonia in her sophomore year. In Berlin, where she actually wanted to receive papers for continuing her studies in Hungary, she got stuck and enrolled at the University of Music . She attended Max Strub's violin class for several months .

After the Allied air raids on Berlin in 1944, she moved to Marienwerder near Berlin and Bad Landeck in Lower Silesia , where Max Strub was able to teach her further. She fled to the Franconian Fürth from the advancing Red Army . Over the next three years she performed as a soloist with the Munich Philharmonic , the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra and the Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as with the symphony orchestras of various major cities. She played under the conductors Rolf Agop and Hans Rosbaud , among others .

From 1948 she studied with Jules Boucherit in Paris and performed in Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy and France, among others. In 1952 she moved to New York City with her husband, the American concert pianist Richard Anschuetz, who worked as a translator for the Nuremberg Trials in the post-war period . Together with the pianist Artur Balsam she gave her first big concert in 1954 in the Town Hall in Manhattan. She played, among other things, Jean Rivier's Violin Concerto. In the USA, a Guadagnini violin became their new instrument. From 1962 until her death in 1996 she played a Stradivarius violin from 1715 ("Lipinski").

This was followed by concerts abroad in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. She performed for Estonian exiles in Canada. She took composers from her home country such as Eduard Tubin , Artur Lemba and Heino Eller into her repertoire . She also worked with the conductor and pianist Olav Roots , who was music director of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra for a long time .

Liivak was buried in Concordia Cemetery in St. Louis , Missouri , after her death in 1996 .

1998 appeared to her in honor of the documentary Armastuse Poeem of Airi Kasera .

literature

  • Ülo Kaevats: Eesti entsüklopeedia [Encyclopedia of Estonia]. Volume 6: Lõuna-nõud . Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus, Tallinn 1992, ISBN 5-89900-009-0 , p. 556.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Liivak, Evi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American violinist of Estonian origin
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Viljandi
DATE OF DEATH November 1, 1996
Place of death New York City