Yves Nat

Yves Nat (born December 29, 1890 in Béziers , † August 31, 1956 in Paris ) was a French pianist and composer .

Life

Yves Nat grew up in his native city of Béziers , where his musical talent showed up at an early age. At the age of 7 he was already playing the great organ of the Cathedral of Béziers and began his musical training at the Conservatory in Toulouse . At the age of 10 he conducted a performance by the Béziers municipal symphony orchestra, where u. a. his own composition, his “orchestral fantasy”, was on the program. Through a review of the concert at the Paris Le Figaro were Gabriel Fauré and Camille Saint-Saëns attention to him. They encouraged him to continue his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris with Louis Diémer , where he won first prize in the master class of the pianist in 1907. Other piano prizes followed, but Nat was not particularly interested in a solo career. He preferred to play chamber music with other instrumentalists; among others he was duo partner of Jacques Thibaud , George Enescu and Eugène Ysaÿe . In 1911 he went on his first concert tour to the USA, but had to interrupt his pianist career during the First World War because he was drafted as a soldier. Nevertheless, he had enough time to compose, and the first printed works were created, the “6 Préludes pour piano” and the “6 Chansons à Païney”.

After the war, Nat continued his pianist career, which took him to all continents until the mid-1930s. From 1934 until his death he was professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory. In 1935 he withdrew completely from concert life in favor of his family and from 1937 devoted himself increasingly to composition and teaching. His students included u. a. Pierre Sancan , Jacques Loussier and Jörg Demus .

In 1953 he resumed his concert activities for a few months and played a. a. the solo part of his own piano concerto - on which he had worked for 20 years - at the premiere on February 4, 1954 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris , together with the Orchester National de la Radio-Diffusion Française under the direction of Pierre Dervaux .

Yves Nat's repertoire consisted primarily of piano music by German composers, particularly by Franz Schubert , Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms . In addition to a few early recordings from the period between 1929 and 1935 (including the piano concerto by Robert Schumann and some of his own piano compositions), there are a few recordings from the 1940s (including the "Symphonic Variations" for piano and orchestra by César Franck ) . From the beginning of the 1950s he made further records, mainly with piano works by Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin , and - in the mid-1950s - all 32 sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven .

Yves Nat fell ill with cancer in 1953, but continued his concert and record recording activities. He died of a heart attack in August 1956. His grave is on the Cimetière de Passy .

In addition to numerous piano works, Yves Nat composed chamber music and an oratorio . The piano works include 6 Preludes (1913–1919), Sonatine (1920), Pour un petit Moujik (1921), Clown (1922), Berceuse pour un nénuphar (posthumously edited 1971) and a piano concerto (1953).

literature

• Ingo Harden , Gregor Willmes : Pianist Profiles. 600 pianists: their biography, their style, their recordings . Yves Nat. 1st edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2008, ISBN 978-3-7618-1616-5 , p. 512 f .
• Alain Pâris : Classical music in the 20th century, instrumentalists, singers, conductors, orchestras, choirs . Nat, Yves. 2nd Edition. dtv, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-32501-1 , p. 553 f .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.koelnklavier.de/texte/interpreten/nat.html
2. ↑ ^{a b} Yves Nat, in: Peter Hollfelder : The piano music . Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 1999. ISBN 3-933203-12-0 .
3. ↑ EMI OVF 7303/13 (ASD Cologne)