Ilona Štěpánová-Kurzová

Ilona Štěpánová - Kurzova ( short Ilona ) ( born November 19, 1899 in Lviv, † 25 September 1975 in Prague) was a Czech pianist and piano teacher.

She was one of the leading representatives of Czech piano school. The music world knows them mainly as a recognized and popular teacher who trained a number of outstanding performers. Your remarkable concert career is less known today, although Ilona Stepanova was in her time with the artists of European significance.

Life

Ilona Kurzova grew up as the only daughter of piano teachers Vilém Kurz and Ruzena short up in a musical family. Play the piano she learned already from an early age with her parents. Her concert debut in Lviv celebrated before her tenth birthday with Mozart's Coronation Concerto in D Major with the Vienna Composers Orchestra led by Oskar Nedbal. This concert was repeated in Vienna and Prague.

From 1911 followed an active concert career which lasted until well into the 1930s. Kurzova played numerous concerts as a soloist with major orchestras and chamber ensembles (including the Bohemian String Quartet, the Quartet Ševčík and the Prague String Quartet ) at home and abroad (Poland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands).

Her repertoire included a eleven piano concertos and major works of world literature from all stylistic periods. She was known primarily for her interpretation of compositions by Frédéric Chopin. From the Czech piano music they played mainly works of Josef Suk, Vítězslav Novák, Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, as well as compositions by contemporary Czech composers such as Karel Boleslav Jirák and Boleslav Vomáčka. A series of compositions put them in before the premiere, including Dvořák's Piano Concerto in G minor ( 1919 Arrangement by V. Short, conducted by Václav Talich ), Janáček's Concertino ( Brno, February 16, 1926) and Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 C major ( Prague 1926).

The marriage with the Czech pianist, composer, teacher and musicologist Vaclav Stepan (1924 ) meant for the pianist, a further enrichment of their public activity, the turn to the interpretation of contemporary music and many independent concerts from the literature for two pianos.

Stepanova educational investments made ​​already in their adolescence clearly, so it was quite natural that she later devoted her attention just this activity. After the death of her husband (1944 ) she became his student at the Master School of the Prague Conservatory, after the death of her father and his disciple went to her about. Since 1946 she became a professor at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Her students include Ivan Moravec, Mirka Pokorná, Ilya Hurník, Anna Machová, Zdeněk Hnát, Dagmar Baloghová, Zorka Lochmanová, Jaroslav Jiránek and Viera Janárceková. The teaching, she devoted all the rest of their lives.

The family tradition continued her son Pavel Stepan. From her father, the pianist took over the respect for the will of the composer ( exact interpretation of the note image, respect for the individual style of the composer ) and sonorous melodic lines and brilliant technical execution.

The Czech piano school enriched it with deep inner experience, color and plasticity of the stop nuances.

Textbook " piano technique "

Stepanova collection of technical studies with methodological explanation ( " piano technique ", Prague 1979) builds partly on the work " Technical basics of piano game" ( Prague, 1924), her father V. Kurz which are places also cited. The individual components of piano technique, it breaks down into the smallest details; while she goes out examples from concert literature. Each of the eighteen chapters deals with a technical problem in progressively higher-level exercises.