Edith Picht-Axenfeld
Edith Picht - Axenfeld ( born January 1, 1914 in Freiburg im Breisgau, † April 19, 2001 in Hinterzarten ) was a German harpsichordist, pianist and organist.
Life
Axenfeld Edith studied in Lugano, Basel and Berlin, among others at Anna Hirzel - Langenhan whose method it represented, with Rudolf Serkin and at times even with Albert Schweitzer, who taught in organ playing. At the 3rd International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1937, at the Alfred Hoehn was on the jury, she won the 6th place. Through the Jewish origin of her family, she was partially occupied in the time of National Socialism with a performance ban.
She was married to the classical scholars and religious philosopher Georg Picht. Until her death she lived in Freiburg im Breisgau in Hinterzarten on the Birklehof. Her grave is at the Freiburg main cemetery in field 57d near the Mitscherlich Chapel.
Work
In her solo career, focusing on the harpsichord music of Johann Sebastian Bach, his sons and the piano works of Viennese Classicism were, she devoted herself to contemporary works (for example, together with her colleague Carl Seemann on two pianos ). The Romantics Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann was their special affection. She sat down always but also for musical " at the edges " of the history of music, and others for Isang Yun and Heinz Holliger.
As a professor, she worked as Klavierdidaktikerin at the Academy of Music in Freiburg. At the congresses of the European Piano Teachers Association of the German section, it participated with contributions to the art of piano playing. They represented a spiritualized, meditative nature of employment with the piano, the purely mechanical practice, even with finger exercises and etudes had no place. In this conception of practice as an active meditation and the involvement of the whole body as an instrument of music, they met with the ideas of their colleagues Jürgen Uhde.
One of her students, who later turned to the conducting and composing, Hans Zender was.
Publications
Your records appeared, and others in German Grammophon (JS Bach, Bartók ), the Musical Heritage Society ( Goldberg Variations, 1968). Since the 1970s, she took regularly for the Camerata Tokyo on, and others, the complete piano works of JS Bach, Chopin etudes (only on LP ) and Schubert's B- flat Sonata. Under the motto load Piano Concert 2001 Brahms intermezzi 118 and 119 ( recording Kusatsu, August 30, 1996) Op 117, published.