Clara Haskil

Clara Haskil ( born January 7, 1895 in Bucharest, † December 7, 1960 in Brussels) was a Romanian pianist. Since 1949 she was Swiss.

Life

Clara Haskil was one of three musical daughters of Sephardic Jews, a mathematician and a seamstress. His first piano lessons when she was three years old by her mother, who died as Clara's father in 1899. As a six- year-old Clara came to the Conservatory of Bucharest. From an uncle brought to Vienna, she played in 1902 before Anton Door. He enthusiastically recommended the child Richard Robert, the teacher of Rudolf Serkin and George Szell. With 8 years Clara played Mozart's A Major Concerto. After three happy years with Robert, she was sent by her uncle to the Conservatoire de Paris. There she studied violin and piano with Joseph Morpain, Alfred Cortot and Lazare Lévy. In 1909 she won the first prize for violin and 2nd prize for piano, 1910 1st prize for piano. The jury Gabriel Fauré, Moritz Moszkowski, Raoul Pugno and Ricardo Viñes sat. The following year, she performed in Paris, Bucharest and Milan. Before Ferruccio Busoni, she starred in Zurich whose famous transcription of Bach's Chaconne, the final sentence of the D minor Partita for Violin. Deeply impressed, Busoni Clara wanted to win as a student. Life she regretted the refusal of her uncle.

1913, developed her severe scoliosis, which forced four years in residential treatment. After recovery in Switzerland, she took her career in Paris again. After concerts in Europe she made her debut in 1924 in the USA, at the Aeolian Hall (New York) and Boston. With the Hallé Orchestra under Hamilton Harty in Manchester she was born in 1926 for the first time in the UK on the stage. In America, they played in the same year Schumann's Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski.

From 1927 she lived again with her uncle in Paris. When he died in 1934, Clara was asked for the first time on his own. Often, she has performed with the Orchestre National de la Radio Diffusion Française, where her sister Jeanne Haskil was a violinist. Clara's phenomenal Sight game and memory helped her out some fixes. The Piano Concerto No. 2 ( Brahms ) it is said to have drawn up in two days. In the patroness of music Winnaretta Singer, Princess Polignac, she made ​​friends with Dinu Lipatti.

Although common diseases, extreme stage fright and the political situation in Europe made ​​life, she performed in the 1930s in Switzerland, Belgium and the United States. With her ​​sisters and some members of the National Orchestra in 1940 she fled from the Germans to Marseille. As Norbert Glanzberg and other Jews found refuge with Countess Pastré. In May 1942, it had to be removed, the tumor of the optic nerve. Shortly before the occupation of Marseilles by the Wehrmacht, they managed to get away with her sister on 8 November 1942 in Switzerland.

After the end of World War II back in Paris, she performed in December 1946 at the Wigmore Hall and in six broadcasts of the BBC. A Dutch artist manager helped her 1949 concerts and radio broadcasts in the Netherlands. For the first time she could live off the revenue and make their own wings. Although scoliosis hurt and cardiopulmonary complications, made concerted Clara Haskil in the 1950s with the major orchestras and chamber musicians. In the duet she liked to play with Pau Casals and Géza Anda, preferably with Arthur Grumiaux. After a concert in Paris both traveled to Brussels. Upon arrival, they fell on a railway station stairs. In vain surgery, she died a month before her 66th birthday. She was buried in the Cimetière Montparnasse.

Clara Haskil was since 1949 Swiss and lived from 1951 to 1960 in Vevey. At her house, a memorial tablet. Clara Haskil is still considered a leading Mozart player and was Peter Feuchtwanger's most important teacher.

Honors

• Several of her recordings have been awarded the Grand Prix du Disque.
• Since 1963, every two years, will be held in the Vevey International Piano Competition Clara Haskil.
• 2004 was donated in The Hague, the Lipatti - Haskil Foundation. In summer 2012, but they broke up again.

Recordings

• Bach, Toccata in E minor
• Schumann, Colorful Leaves