Marie Leonhardt

Marie Leonhardt-Amsler (1980)

Marie Leonhardt-Amsler (born November 6, 1928 in Lausanne ) is a Swiss-Dutch violinist who has been a pioneer of historical performance practice since 1960 .

Live and act

Marie Amsler grew up in a music-loving family where well-known musicians such as August Wenzinger and Paul Sacher gave private concerts. She began her violin studies with Michel Schwalbé at the Geneva Conservatory . After graduating from Geneva, she moved to Basel, found an apartment in August Wenziger's house, and studied for a year at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with the violinist Walter Kägi. It was also here that she met her future husband, Gustav Leonhardt . Back in Geneva, she won the Conservatory's Prix ​​de Virtuosité with a violin sonata by César Franck . She then took private lessons from Max Rostal , who taught at the Guildhall School of Music in London. While studying together with Gustav Leonhardt in Vienna, they met Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his wife Alice Harnoncourt . In 1953 she married Gustav Leonhardt and the couple lived in Vienna for a few years. In addition to the modern repertoire, she began early with playing the baroque violin and progressively relearning the old playing techniques. In 1954 the first recordings of works by Henry Purcell were made in Vienna with the assistance of the English counter tenor Alfred Deller . Her new violin, discovered by a violin maker on her way home from Vienna to the Netherlands, is an old scale instrument by Jakob Stainer from 1676, one of the master’s few instruments that has never been modernized.

Marie Leonhardt can look back on a long career as a lecturer in her subject, and her first students included Lucy van Dael and Alda Stuurop. In 1968 she began teaching at the Rotterdam Conservatory . She held master classes in London, Copenhagen, San Francisco, Bremen, Madrid, Tokyo, Paris and Saint Petersburg, among others. Marie Leonhardt taught at times at the early music department of the Geneva Conservatory, where she led a string class.

She was concertmaster in the Leonhardt Consort founded in 1955 under the direction of her husband Gustav Leonhardt, with whom she made numerous recordings for the series DAS ALTE WERK of the Telefunken label (later Teldec ). She also played first violin from 1969 in Ton Koopman's newly founded ensemble “Musica Antiqua Amsterdam”.

From 1980 she directed the Summer Academy Casa de Mateus in Portugal and became artistic director of the Vila Real Festival . With the Ensemble Baroque de Mateus , which Marie Leonhardt founded with young musicians such as Florian Deuter , Andrew Manze or Richard Egarr , she performed at the major early music festivals in many European countries. In 1991 the ensemble took part in the Macau Festival, with subsequent concerts in the Chinese cities of Canton and Shanghai. From the end of the 1990s she devoted herself increasingly to passing on historical playing techniques to young Russian musicians. In 2000 Marie Leonhardt became honorary president of the annual early music festival in Saint Petersburg .

Discography (selection)

• Chaconnes et Passacailles , Ensemble Baroque de Mateus, 1990, 1991, 2003 and 2015 (label, L'Autre Monde).

literature

• Nico van Schouwenburg: Opus V bespiegelingen over de (oude) muziek , editor, Stichting Musica Antica da Camera ISBN 978-90-818028-2-6

Individual evidence

1. ↑ tom 1/2014, tijdschrift oudemuziek pp. 44–49 (accessed June 24, 2016)
2. ↑ Jury of the Van Wassenaer Concours + curriculum vitae (accessed August 18, 2010)