Loris Margaritis

The eight-year-old virtuoso in Munich

Lykourgos "Loris" Margaritis ( Greek Λυκούργος "Λώρης" Μαργαρίτης , born August 25, 1895 in Egion , Achaia; † September 27, 1953 in Athens ) was a Greek pianist and composer of classical music .

Life

Margaritis caused a sensation at the age of seven when he played six of his own compositions at a concert at the Athens Conservatory . Georgios Nazos then advised his parents to send him to Germany. As an eight-year-old, he played in front of the Bavarian king and then in public in Munich. Here he became the model for the main character in Das Wunderkind , an artist story written in December 1903 by Thomas Mann , who had attended a concert in Munich. Margaritis studied music in Munich from 1903 to 1904, from 1904 to 1908 he attended the Greek School in Berlin and at the same time received private lessons from well-known lecturers at the Berlin University of Music (piano with Bernhard Stavenhagen and composition with Robert Kahn ). In 1908 he enrolled with a special permit as an under-18-year-old to study at the Royal Academy of Music in Munich, where Heinrich Kaspar Schmid (piano), Friedrich Klose (composition), and Felix Mottl (conducting) were his teachers.

After completing his studies in 1913, Margaritis moved to Thessaloniki and was involved in founding the local conservatory, where he taught piano from 1915 and was also a member of the management from 1936. From 1920 he gave numerous concerts in Central Europe. In 1925 he married his former student Ida Margaritis-Rosenkranz, with whom he had formed a piano duo since 1921 , which performed numerous Mozart works for the first time in Greece. In 1927, together with Bernhard Paumgartner , he founded the piano courses at the International Summer Academy Mozarteum in Salzburg, where he - with interruptions - also taught until his death. After Austria was annexed to the German Reich, Margaritis' courses at the summer academy were officially canceled.

In 1940 Margaritis moved to Athens, where he became head of the music department at the Greek Ministry of Education. After the German Wehrmacht occupied the city of Thessaloniki on April 9, 1941 , Margaritis and his wife, who was of Jewish origin, were persecuted by the Gestapo because they were accused of having contacts with Greek partisans. In 1942 the two were able to flee to Athens and find refuge with prominent intellectuals. From 1945 Margaritis was a member of the Supreme Music Council . In 1948 he was invited back to the Summer Academy in Salzburg by Bernhard Paumgartner. From 1952 onwards, Margaritis decisively determined the legislation on Greek music education. He was also a juror at numerous European competitions, such as the Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

Honors

• Golden Mozart Medal of the International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg (1953)
• Knight's Cross of the Greek Order of the Phoenix (1954)

Selection of works

The compositional work clearly takes a back seat to Margaritis' international teaching and concert activities; many works remained unfinished or unpublished. He also transcribed some of his orchestral works for piano duo.

• Odysseus and Nausicaa, Epic Symphony after Homer for orchestra (Premiere 1930 In Thessaloniki)
• Pastorale for small orchestra
• Makedonitika in two parts for orchestra
• Symphonic sketch for orchestra
• Ena stigmieo ('A moment') for two pianos
• Voukolikos Choros (' Shepherd's Dance ') for two pianos
• Sonatina op.5 (1920) for piano
• Stichi ('Verse'), 11 pieces for piano op.10 (after 1919)
• Greek songs (two booklets with nine songs)

literature

• Takis Kalogeropoulos: Loris Margaritis, in: Lexiko tis Ellinikis mousikis , Athens 1998–99 ( online at www.musipedia.gr)

Web links

• Biography on naxos.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Date from his own biography, cf. Kalogeropoulos (see lit.); according to other information on August 15, 1895 ( To Vima's date of birth on October 9, 2010) or August 2, 1894 in Athens (in Kürschner's Musicians 'Handbook, quoted from Loris Margaritis in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO) )