Margrit Weber

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Margrit Weber (born February 24, 1924 in Ebnat-Kappel , † November 2, 2001 in Zollikon ) was a Swiss pianist .

Life

Margrit Weber was born in Ebnat-Kappel as the first child of Marie and Carl Hartmann. The mother had a soprano voice and played the hand organ to the house music, while the father practiced the piano, which he had taught himself. After the family moved to Erlenbach in Zurich , 10-year-old Margrit Hartmann attended the Zurich Music Conservatory . In 1938 she took part in the first Jecklin music competition with 300 other young people, which she won.

Her first teachers were José Berr for piano and Heinrich Funk for organ lessons. At the age of 15 she got her first job as organist in the wedding church in the hamlet of Wetzwil. The budding pianist continued her education at the Zurich Conservatory with Walter Lang and Max Egger. She also gave piano lessons herself and at the age of 18 had 25 students. One of them - the entrepreneur Karl Weber, who is 21 years older than him - heard her at one of her concerts at which she performed the work of the Swiss folk song composer Hans Roelli and asked her for her hand two years later. The marriage of Margrit and Karl Weber had four children. Always striving to live up to her motherhood role as a pianist, she only achieved the concert diploma in 1952, eight years after her diploma as a piano teacher, in 1952, also with the grade very good from Max Egger.

The actual start of his career was in 1955, when the Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay wanted to get to know the Winterthur City Orchestra in January for a later engagement. That's why he listened to a concert by the Musikkollegium Winterthur . Margrit Weber was engaged as a soloist for this evening and among other things played the burlesque for piano and orchestra in D minor by Richard Strauss under the direction of Victor Desarzens . Fricsay was so taken with the sensitive and unpretentious interpretation that he invited her to Naples and Berlin for performances during the concert break.

Soon afterwards, the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft recorded it , and further recordings of piano works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Ludwig van Beethoven , Carl Maria von Weber and Manuel de Falla up to Sergei Rachmaninoff , César Franck , Jean Françaix , Harald Genzmer , Bohuslav Martinů , Arthur Honegger and Alexander Tscherepnin .

Ferenc Fricsay also initiated contact with Igor Stravinsky , who composed the Movements for piano and orchestra as a commission for Margrit Weber .

The premiere under the direction of the composer in New York's Town Hall in January 1960 was one of the highlights of her career and paved the way for further concerts, including one of her greatest successes, the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor by Johannes Brahms .

Quote Margrit Weber: One of my most beautiful and unforgettable musical experiences under Fricsay's direction was the Brahms D minor concert with the KGL Kapel in Copenhagen, where after the final chords the audience rose silently from their seats and there was breathless silence for seconds until finally the Applause set in.

She has given concerts both overseas and in Europe under the direction of conductors such as Charles Munch , George Szell , Josef Krips , Rafael Kubelík and Paul Sacher . She was on friendly terms with contemporary composers, including Swiss composers, and repeatedly premiered new works: 1958 the Bagatelles by Alexander Tscherepnin and the Fantasia concertante by Bohuslav Martinů, in 1960 the sonata for piano No. 2, op.70 by Walter, dedicated to her Lang and the aforementioned Movements for piano and orchestra by Igor Stravinsky, in 1962 the Concert en sextuor by the Swiss Albert Moeschinger , in 1963 the ballad for piano and percussion by Armin Schibler , in 1964 Wolfgang Fortner's epigrams , then the Partita concertante by Hugo Pfister, the Concertino for piano and strings by Harald Genzmer, Kleine Hörformen for violin and piano by Wladimir Vogel , the pianoforte cantate by Dalibor Vačkář and in 1972 at the International Music Festival in Lucerne, the piano concerto No. 6 by Alexander Tscherepnin.

In addition to her engagements as a soloist, Margrit Weber also worked as an accompanying pianist, e. B. with a song record by Othmar Schoeck , which she recorded in 1958 with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau . In later years she often accompanied the Swiss baritone Kurt Widmer , for example in Johannes Brahms' Beautiful Magelone together with Anne-Marie Blanc as the narrator.

After the early death of her husband Karl Weber in 1973, she continued to give concerts here and there, especially in the context of chamber music, but in the following years she devoted herself increasingly to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In 1991 she gave up public concerts entirely and justified this step with wanting to make room for younger talents, because as the head of a concert training class she had experienced firsthand how the young musicians pushed to the podium and to success.

The city of Zurich honored her with the Hans Georg Nägeli Medal in 1971 for her services. She remained active in an advisory capacity until the 1990s, be it as a member of the music commission of the Tonhalle Zürich , be it as a member of the scholarship and examination commission of the Conservatory Zürich or as an adviser to the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in Munich. In the community where she lived, she was a founding member of the Foundation for the Promotion of Music in Zollikon.

Margrit Weber donated most of her correspondence and musical collection to the Zurich Central Library in 1998 . Another part of the estate is in the Paul Sacher Foundation , Basel.

Awards

  • 1938: Winner of the Jecklin youth music competition
  • 1971: Hans Georg Nägeli medal. This honors artists whose work shows a broad creative spectrum and who enrich Zurich's cultural life through their work. Margrit Weber was honored for her active commitment to contemporary music and as a supporter of Swiss music creation.

literature

  • Carla Weber: Margrit Weber - portrait of a pianist. Self-published, Zurich 2014.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Weber, Margrit (1924–2001) in the ZB Zurich, accessed on November 26, 2014.
  2. ^ Margrit Weber ( memento of June 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on the Paul Sacher Foundation website, accessed on November 26, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Weber, Margrit
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss pianist
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Ebnat-Kappel
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 2001
Place of death Zollikon