Jörg Demus

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Jörg Demus (left) with his concert agent Manfred Jahn and the composer Werner Bärtschi (2016)
Jörg Demus with Manfred Jahn (2016)

Jörg Demus (born December 2, 1928 in St. Pölten , Lower Austria ; † April 16, 2019 in Vienna ) was an Austrian pianist and composer .

Life

Jörg Demus was the son of the art historian Otto Demus and the concert violinist Erika Demus. He received his first piano lessons at the age of six and was admitted to the Vienna Music Academy at the age of eleven . There he studied organ , piano , composition (music) and orchestral conducting until 1945 . He gave his first piano recital in 1943 in the Brahms Hall of the Wiener Musikverein .

In 1945 he was called up for military service, was able to make his way to Upper Austria at the end of the war and was taken prisoner by the British, from which he was released after about six weeks.

In 1950 he started his international career in London . 1951–1953 he studied with Yves Nat in Paris and then with Walter Gieseking in Saarbrücken . In 1956 he received one of the most important awards for pianists, the first prize at the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano . In 1970 he received the Jakob Prandtauer Prize for Science and Art from the city of St. Pölten.

As a musician and teacher, he enjoyed worldwide recognition. Demus made a special contribution to the renaissance of the fortepiano , which he used for many recordings despite all the technical inadequacies of old original instruments and thus achieved a high degree of authenticity. Demus often played works of the Romantic period , he also appeared as a song accompanist ( e.g. by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , Elisabeth Schwarzkopf , Elly Ameling or Peter Schreier ) and in chamber music ensembles (e.g. in a duet with the pianist Paul Badura-Skoda or the cellist Maria Kliegel ).

Demus taught at the music academies in Stuttgart and Vienna .

For a long time Jörg Demus worked on a CD production, Die Geschichte des Klaviers , which ended up with 100 fully recorded CDs.

Recordings (selection)

  • Claude Debussy : Complete Piano Works (5 CDs)
  • Robert Schumann : The Complete Piano Works. Original Recordings, Nuova Era Internazionale 2007 (13 CDs, 317 tracks, 14.3 hours)

Own compositions:

  • Poetic Sonata in G minor, op.8.
  • Love op. 21 after Verlaine's Crimen Amoris .
  • Sonata for cello and piano in C minor, op. 35 “Il Tramonto”.
  • Sonate sylvestre op.48 (Sonata for violin and piano), Gramola 2009.
  • Night of the Stars, op.14

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pianist Jörg Demus died at the age of 90 on nachrichten.at (accessed April 24, 2019).
  2. ↑ Jörg Demus: Music is the sister of poetry . In: Images of People . Austria 1 . Retrieved January 22, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b c d Demus: Works for Cello and Piano. Marco Polo / Naxos Records 1998, MP 5036 on naxos.com (accessed April 24, 2019).


personal data
SURNAME Demus, Jörg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian pianist and composer
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Polten
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 2019
Place of death Vienna