Michael Studer

Michael Studer (born December 12, 1940 in Thun , Switzerland ) is a Swiss pianist living in Bern .

Education and career

Michael Studer grew up in a musically and culturally stimulating home; his father worked as a grammar school director in Thun and Interlaken , his mother was an excellent pianist who did not appear in public. He began his pianistic training at the Bern Conservatory with Suzanne Eggli, continued it from 1960 to 1962 at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris with Yvonne Lefébure and then went to Richard Hauser in Vienna as a private student . His playing was perfected in master classes with Bruno Seidlhofer in Cologne and Géza Anda in Lucerne .

In 1962, Studer was the first winner of the piano competition of the Paris Conservatory and then won other prizes at the Great Pembaur Competition in Bern and the Concours Musical International de Montréal . He also received the culture award of the city of Thun .

From the mid-1960s, Studer appeared regularly as a soloist at Swiss music festivals, such as the Tibor Varga Festival ( Sion ), the Yehudi Menuhin Festival ( Gstaad ), the Lucerne International Music Festival (now the Lucerne Festival ) and the Zurich International June Weeks (now the Festival Zurich ).

He worked with internationally renowned conductors, including Charles Dutoit , Zdeněk Mácal , Paul Klecki , Armin Jordan , Wolfgang Sawallisch , Erich Leinsdorf , Esa-Pekka Salonen , Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos , Fritz Rieger , Herbert Blomstedt , Gerd Albrecht and Antal Doráti .

In 2001 Michael Studer had to give up his concert activities and his professorship at the Bern Conservatory due to a chronic hearing impairment.

Recordings and artistic significance

From the late 1960s, Michael Studer recorded solo works by Brahms , Chopin , Debussy , Liszt , Mozart , Ravel , Schubert and Schumann on a total of five LPs for the Luna record label he founded .

Further recordings followed on various Swiss labels. In Jecklin a LP appeared with operas by Strauss , Nietzsche and Liszt; his artistic partner as speaker was Gert Westphal . Studer recorded works by Bach , Haydn , Mozart (piano concertos No. 9, 11 and 12 with Helmut Müller-Brühl ), Rachmaninov and Schumann for Claves Records . His last recording, produced by Müller & Schade in 1999 , was a work by Chopin.

Studer's piano playing happily unites the essential conceptions of the great German and French piano schools of the 20th century: His technically superior interpretations are characterized by extraordinary textual fidelity, structural clarity, rhythmic conciseness and high tonal sensitivity and avoid any sentimentality or affectation of expression. Thanks to this universality and concentration on the presentation of the musical content, Studer has met the most diverse stylistic requirements of piano music between Bach and Ravel in exemplary recordings. He is thus continuing the line of great Swiss pianists represented by Edwin Fischer and Paul Baumgartner in the 20th century.

In 2007, Claves Records released a representative selection of Michael Studer's recordings from 1971 to 1999 under the title Michael Studer - The Legacy , supplemented by two concert recordings by Swiss radio with Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major (conducted by Sawallisch and the Orchester de la Suisse Romande ) and the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor by Camille Saint-Saëns (under Rieger and the Orchester de Chambre de Lausanne ).

literature

Contributions by Olivier Verrey, Antonin Scherrer and Michael Studer in the booklet of the CD edition Michael Studer - The Legacy. [Claves Records 50-2713 / 18, 6 CDs (2007)]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Detailed description ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the label's website, accessed January 7, 2014.