Géza Anda

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Géza Anda (around 1965)
Memorial plaque for Géza Anda on the house where he was born in Budapest

Géza Anda [ 'geːzɒ' ɒndɒ ] (born November 19, 1921 in Budapest , Hungary ; † June 13, 1976 in Zurich , Switzerland ) was a Swiss pianist of Hungarian origin.

life and career

The son of a school principal was admitted to the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in his hometown at the age of 13 and initially taught by Imre Stefaniai and Imre Keeri-Szanto before he was assigned to Ernst von Dohnányi's piano class ; György Cziffra and György Sebők were among his fellow students . The theory and chamber music courses given by Leó Weiner were also groundbreaking for Anda . At the age of 18 Anda won the Franz Liszt Prize of the City of Budapest, and in the two following years the Prize of the Franz Liszt Society; In 1941 he received his concert diploma. Anda was able to evade the threat of being drafted as a soldier after the mobilization of Hungary in World War II through a state scholarship that took him to the Collegium Hungaricum in Berlin . In 1941/42, Anda was already a sought-after soloist in performances in the German Reich, the occupied Netherlands , Switzerland and Hungary. In 1942 he played in Budapest for the first time publicly the 2nd Piano Concerto of Brahms under Willem Mengelberg ; In the same year the first recordings followed in Berlin at Polydor . In 1943 Anda returned from a three-month tour, which u. a. Intended engagements in Switzerland, not going back to Berlin; he initially lived in Geneva and after the war settled permanently in Zurich. He received important influences in Paris in 1947/48: it was here that he met the music philosopher and advisor Igor Stravinsky , Pierre Souvtchinsky (1892–1985), and made a lifelong friendship with Pierre Boulez . In 1953 Anda married Helene Winterstein-Bosshard, who took over his management; two years later he acquired Swiss citizenship.

Between 1952 and 1974, Anda performed annually at the Salzburg Festival , where he was one of the most frequently engaged soloists, with recitals and orchestral concerts. From 1955 he completed a total of 17 tours in the USA , where he appeared in the major concert centers, as well as in Canada ; Anda has also given concerts in Japan and South Africa . In Europe he appeared regularly in Denmark, France, Holland, Italy, Austria, Sweden and especially in Great Britain; Anda had a long friendship there with the British pianist Sir Clifford Curzon . In his hometown of Budapest Anda played after emigrating only twice, in 1964 and 1973. Anda's last public appearance was on June 1, 1976 in Innsbruck with the Trout Quintet by Franz Schubert instead, which he performed together with the Innsbruck's string quartet.

In 1964, Anda married the entrepreneur Hortense Bührle (1926–2014) for the second time ; In 1969 their son Gratian was born. Anda died of the consequences of an esophageal cancer diagnosed in 1975 and initially successfully operated on . A memorial plaque has been on his parents' house at 19 Tarcsay Vilmos utca (12th district) since November 2013.

Awards

Anda received the coveted Grand Prix du Disque several times for his recordings , for the first time in 1948 for his Paris recording of three Brahms interludes; In 1971 his complete recording of all of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's piano concertos was awarded the Vienna Flute Clock . In 1965 the French minister of culture awarded him the title of Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et des lettres . In 1969 Anda was elected an honorary member ("Honorary Member") of the London Royal Academy of Music and in 1973 was appointed honorary professor by the Austrian Ministry of Education.

Pedagogical work and students

Since 1952 he has been a lecturer at the Salzburg Summer Courses, and in 1960 Anda took over the masterclasses of his mentor Edwin Fischer in Lucerne , which he later continued at the Muraltengut in Zurich. His assistant was the Danish pianist and composer Egil Harder (1917–1997), whom Anda had already met during his time in Berlin. Anda's master students include the pianists Daniel Adni, László Gyimesi , Benedikt Koehlen, Peter Lang , Mariaclara Monetti, Traute Murtfeld, Georges Pludermacher, Zsuzsanna Sirokay , Sontraud Speidel , Michael Studer , Edith Thauer and Dinorah Varsi .

Anda was also on the jury of the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition and the Leeds International Piano Competition .

Artistic perception and repertoire. Cooperation with conductors

By Wilhelm Furtwängler , under which he in January 1943 in the Old Berlin Philharmonic with the symphoniques Variations of César Franck debuted called "troubadour of the piano", it went Anda under the influence of his teacher Dohnányi to the tension between design and interpretation : the comprehensive analytical and intellectual examination of the musical text (the confident but not perfectionist manual mastery of which was a mere prerequisite for Anda) contrasts with the interpreter's subjective ability to imagine; Through the precise control and lively nuance of phrasing, timbre, attack, tempo and dynamics, it should clarify the poetic essence of the respective work, but at the same time achieve a narrative style that seems spontaneous. Anda therefore counted among his role models such contrasting pianists as Wilhelm Backhaus and Alfred Cortot , who represented both sides of this tension in an exemplary manner for him. As a conductor and soloist in Mozart's piano concertos (see below), it was particularly important to Anda that the musicians learn to listen to one another. These basics and their consequences for the profession of the pianist were the focus of his lessons. A series of written records that have been published in excerpts (Schmidt 1991, see literature) can be taken as the outline of Anda's interpretation.

Géza Anda became famous for his commitment to the compositions of his compatriot Béla Bartók . In particular, the 2nd Piano Concerto (1930/31) he helped the International Society for New Music to breakthrough with a performance at the World Music Day in Salzburg in 1952 ; in the course of his career he performed it over 300 times. Anda devoted himself equally intensively to the development of solo works and concerts of the classical-romantic repertoire ( Beethoven , Chopin , Liszt , Schumann , Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov ), which he recorded for the Columbia label from 1953 to 1958 under the producer Walter Legge . Anda's early repertoire also included works by J. S. Bach and Scarlatti as well as some Mozart piano sonatas, including Sonata No. 18 in D major KV 576 recorded for the Telefunken label in 1951 . He has played works by Haydn , Ravel and - the only contemporary work - the piano sonata of his friend Rolf Liebermann for several West German radio stations . In 1953 he recorded two chamber music works by Bartók for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, the sonata for two pianos and percussion with Sir Georg Solti and the drummers Karl Peinkofer and Ludwig Porth, and the contrasts for violin, clarinet and piano with Tibor Varga and the clarinetist Paul Blocks.

After signing an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 1959, Anda first recorded all three piano concertos and the Rhapsody for piano and orchestra op. 1 by Bartók with his long-term partner Ferenc Fricsay and the RSO Berlin ; these interpretations are still of reference today. This was followed by recordings of other major works by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and, above all, Schumann. The 1964 recording of Schubert's last piano sonata No. 21 in B flat major, D 960 , occupies a special place in Anda's discography .

In addition to Fricsay, Anda, who also conducted classical symphonies at his concerts with the Camerata Academica des Mozarteum Salzburg and the English Chamber Orchestra , has worked with numerous great conductors of different generations, such as Claudio Abbado , Ernest Ansermet , Sir John Barbirolli , Karl Böhm , Pierre Boulez , Ernest Bour , Bernard Haitink , Eugen Jochum , Herbert von Karajan , Joseph Keilberth , István Kertész , Otto Klemperer , Rafael Kubelík , Ferdinand Leitner , Erich Leinsdorf , Fritz Reiner , Hans Rosbaud , Sir Malcolm Sargent , Carl Schuricht , Georg Solti and George Szell .

The Mozart interpreter. Last recordings and plans

As early as the mid-1950s, Anda included individual Mozart piano concertos on his concert programs; He was encouraged by Bernhard Paumgartner and Clara Haskil , whose preferred duo partner he was in Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in E flat major KV 365 . As the world's first pianist, Anda began in 1961 with a record recording of all 25 solo concerts (including the early pasticci ) with the Camerata Academica Salzburg, which he completed in 1970. (The complete recording of the concerts made in Vienna in 1965/66 by Lili Kraus , who did not conduct himself, was published in 1967.) Following Fischer's example, Anda conducted from the piano, but without joining a strictly historical performance practice; He wrote and published his own cadences for 16 concerts. Anda's interpretation of the slow movement from Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467 , achieved worldwide popularity as film music in the Swedish film Elvira Madigan (1967).

Anda's last record projects were also about Mozart (piano concertos nos. 20 and 21 in May 1973 as soloist and conductor with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra ) and Chopin (Complete Waltz, December 1975 in the Siemensvilla in Berlin-Lankwitz). These recordings were made for the Eurodisc label and were produced by Hans Richard Stracke (1933-2010). Anda's plans for a complete recording of Brahms' piano work (including the First Piano Concerto op.15 with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic) for the DGG remained unrealized.

Aftermath and Discographic Heritage

In 1979, Hortense Anda-Bührle founded the Géza Anda Foundation and launched the Géza Anda Concours , which has taken place every three years and has established itself as one of the most demanding and prestigious piano competitions of our time. Since 2009, the competition has been supplemented by the Géza Anda Piano Days, taking place in cooperation with renowned music institutions , which, as a combination of master classes and concerts with prize winners of the Concours and a musicological supporting program, pass on Anda's educational and artistic ethos to the young generation of pianists. After the opening in 2009 in Münster , the Piano Days were held in 2010 at the Berlin University of the Arts and in 2013 and 2016 at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest. The piano week of the Swiss music festival Musikdorf Ernen ( Wallis ) is predominantly contested by award winners of the Concours. In 2017, the Giornate Géza Anda took place for the first time in the Ligurian city of Cervo as part of the music festival founded by the violinist and conductor Sándor Végh Anda 1994 Pietro De Maria is.

The majority of Géza Anda's recordings, a number of his recorded concert appearances at the Salzburg Festival and numerous radio recordings are now available on CD as re-releases or first releases and can be found in the online discography (see web links). The Anda Foundation published recordings of Anda's lessons at Muraltengut in 1977 on record.

Publications

  • Cadenzas for piano concertos by WA Mozart (cadenzas for KV 37, 39, 41, 175, 238, 246, 271, 413, 456, 466, 467, 482, 491, 503, 537 and 595). Bote & Bock, Berlin 1973.

Movies

  • The Concours Géza Anda - legacy of a pianist . Jörg Lohner / nmz media (Germany 2011).
  • Géza Anda - artist and person . Peter Reichenbach (Switzerland 1979).
  • Géza Anda - pianist, conductor, educator. A work report . Richard Leacock and Rolf Liebermann (Switzerland 1966).

literature

  • Robert Christian Bachmann: Great interpreters in conversation, Hallwag, Bern 1976. Reprint: dtv, Munich 1978.
  • Andres Briner: Anda, Géza. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Géza Anda. Contributions by Martin Meyer and Wolfgang Rathert; Interviews with András Schiff , Jonathan Nott and Hortense Anda-Bührle; Portraits of the winners Pietro De Maria, Dénés Varjon, Alexei Volodin , Hisako Kawamura, Hüseyin Sermet, Henri Sigfridsson , Jinsang Lee and Konstantin Scherbakow. Special edition of the magazine Du for Anda's 90th birthday as a supplement to issue 71/2011, ISBN 978-3-905931-17-4 .
  • Géza Anda. A souvenir picture. Contributions by Karl Schumann, Max Haindl-König and Egil Harder, among others. Artemis, Zurich 1977.
  • Joachim Kaiser : Great contemporary pianists. Rütten and Loening, Munich 1965. Fourth, expanded edition: Piper, Munich 1978.
  • Wolfgang Rathert : The interpreter Géza Anda. In: Alain Steffen: "... and suddenly I can fly." Interviews with musicians II. Rombach, Freiburg i. B. 2014, ISBN 978-3-7930-9772-3 , pp. 91-97.
  • Hans Christian Schmidt: Géza Anda. "... Sixteenths are also music." Documents of his life. Artemis, Zurich 1991.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Concours Géza Anda
  2. ↑ He didn't want to play with Pierre Boulez: the pianist Géza Anda
  3. ^ Géza Anda Documentary: Pianist, Conductor, Teacher
personal data
SURNAME Anda, Géza
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-Swiss pianist
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1976
Place of death Zurich