Youra Guller

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Youra Guller (born May 14, 1895 in Marseille , † December 31, 1980 in Munich ) was a French pianist of Jewish descent. Admittedly by Pablo Casals , Alfred Cortot , Ernest Ansermet and others, it remained unnoticed by the general public for decades and was not mentioned in encyclopedias .

Life

Rose-Georgette , as she was actually called, was the daughter of a Russian father and a Romanian mother. At the age of five she performed in a piano recital, at nine she was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris . More interested in violin playing and chamber music , she gave up piano lessons with Isidore Philipp . She played with the violinist Albert Einstein and was friends with Pablo Picasso and André Gide , to whom she gave piano lessons. She was particularly close to Clara Haskil , Guiomar Novaes , Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire . Vaslav Nijinsky offered her ballet lessons . She frequented the Polignac salons and was a center of Parisian society . In 1926 she recorded seven piano pieces for the Welte-Mignon reproduction piano in the recording studio of M. Welte & Sons .

After traveling to Shanghai for a ten day tour , she stayed in China for eight years . When she returned to France in the late 1930s, it was too late for an artistic return. After the Wehrmacht invaded France , she was forced to hide from the Gestapo as a Jew , with the Countess and patroness Lily Pastré in Pastré Castle in the Montredon district of Marseille. In the meantime ill, she did not begin to give concerts again until the 1950s - when she needed money. Her husband, the publisher Jacques Schiffrin , died in 1950 at the age of 58.

Her few recordings in 1956 include the Mazurkas , the Nocturnes (both by Chopin ), the piano sonata in B minor by Liszt (1965), the last two Beethoven sonatas (1973) and pieces by Scarlatti , Rameau , Couperin , Bach and Granados ( 1975). Bach preferred to play them in transcriptions by Liszt and Busoni . Milhaud dedicated some piano works to her.

The Munich-born piano teacher Peter Feuchtwanger rediscovered the still enchanting Youra in London in 1965 . An avid music critic helped her make a late comeback . She made her debut in New York in 1971 at the age of 76.

In the last years of their lives, Yehudi Menuhin , Radu Lupu and Martha Argerich paid for their maintenance . Recordings have been received from Schumann's Symphonic Etudes and Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto (with Ansermet and the Orchester de la Suisse Romande ).

Recordings

literature

Cord Garben: Past luck ... the art and fate of legendary pianists . Wilhelmshaven 2018, 2nd edition. Pp. 175-186. ISBN 978-3-7959-1013-6

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to French WP
  2. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Lempfrid on Deutschlandfunk (October 20, 1988)
  3. ↑ Gerhard Dangel and Hans-W. Schmitz: Welte-Mignon -Reproduktionen / Welte-Mignon Reproductions. Complete catalog of recordings for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano 1905–1932 / Complete Library Of Recordings For The Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano 1905–1932 . Stuttgart 2006. ISBN 3-00-017110-X . P. 446
  4. ↑ a b forte-piano-pianissimo.com
  5. ↑ Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542
  6. ↑ Peter Feuchtwanger (1999)
  7. ↑ bach-cantatas.com
  8. ↑ JPC
personal data
SURNAME Guller, Youra
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guller, Rose-Georgette (real name); Güller, Youra
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French pianist
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Marseille
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1980
Place of death Munich