Maria João Pires

Maria João Pires ( born July 23, 1944 in Lisbon ) is a Portuguese pianist.

Life

It began very early to play the piano and gave her first concert at the age of five years. With seven she played already publicly piano concertos by Mozart and 9 years old, she won the first prize at the Portuguese Youth Music Competition. From 1953 to 1960 she studied with Campos Coelho at the Conservatorio Nacional in Lisbon. She continued her studies in Germany continued, first in Munich with Rosemarie Schmid -Münster at the State Academy of Music, then with Karl Engel at the Musikhochschule Hannover, the stronghold of the pianist training.

The international breakthrough Maria João Pires, 1970, as the competition of international broadcasters won the 200th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven in Brussels. You would rather have become a chamber musician, if she had " previously taken the right musicians ." The media and the international music business it is extremely critical: " to make a career that goes against the music." How Glenn Gould loves the intimacy of the recording studio more than the hustle and bustle of the concert halls. Applause is their more embarrassing:

"Music, that's not the only Schöpung a human. There is something else. A composer has in itself the power and possibilities that can explain ncht; but he also has them from somewhere -. from around the world, the universe As a performer ... I'm just a transmitter, which sends the music. "

Recorded she has works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin and other composers. The musical and historical development it follows to Béla Bartók. For new music, she says:

" The trend that bothers me about modern music is hard to describe. There is a lack, a lack of balance, to balance between the human mind on the one hand and the infinite, the universe on the other side. That's why ... I have no relationship to modern times, although there are undoubtedly some very good pieces. "

She is married to the violinist Augustin Dumay and has four children.