Moura Lympany

Dame Moura Lympany ( born August 18, 1916 in Saltash, Cornwall, † 28 March 2005 in Gorbio, France; born as Mary Gertrude Johnstone ) was an English pianist.

Life

Lympany occurred thirteen years old in the Royal Academy of Music, where she was a piano student of Ambrose Coviello. In 1932 she won the Gold Medal in the Challen piano and Hine Prize for composition and led the orchestra of the Academy under the direction of Henry Wood Edward Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor on.

She then studied nine months in Vienna with Paul Weingarten and then took lessons with Mathilde Verne, a pupil of Clara Schumann. In 1935 she made ​​her debut with Schumann's Piano Concerto under the baton of Sir Thomas Beecham at the Wigmore Hall. After Verne's death Lympany was for ten years a pupil of Tobias Matthay. This she sent in 1938 to the Ysaÿe Piano Competition in Brussels, where she won the second place behind Emil Gilels. Was Arthur Rubinstein, the judge of the competition, arranged a European tour for them.

In 1940, she played with sensational success the British premiere of Aram Khachaturian's Piano Concerto. She played the work later conducted by the composer at the Royal Albert Hall as well as the premieres in Paris, Milan, screamer and Australia and took it for Decca Records to record on. Furthermore, she played the works of contemporary British composers such as Alan Rawsthorne, John Ireland, Benjamin Britten, Richard Arnell, Frederick Delius and Malcolm Williamson.

1946 represented Lympany Great Britain at the Prague Spring. In 1948 she made ​​her debut at New York's Town Hall. In 1956 she undertook with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, a concert tour of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. During this time she also took a few hours at Edward helmsman. 1973 Lympany bought a house in Perpignan in southern France, where they founded a music festival in 1980.

In 1984 she played at a concert in Boston Brahms ' Variations on a Theme of Paganini and Liszt's Polonaise in E- flat major. In 1994, she appeared at the Proms with Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto. After her eightieth birthday, Lympany withdrew from the concert. In 1992 she was appointed by the Queen to Lady Commander of the British Empire, the same year she was honored by the French government as a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. In 1995 she became a Fellow of the Royal College of Music in London.

In addition to the mentioned piano concerto by Khachaturian Lympany took in the 1940s, among others Ernst von Dohnányi on Capriccio in F Minor, Mili Balakirev Islamey and the first pianist Rachmaninov Preludes all. Among others, emerged in the 1950s Recordings of works by Felix Mendelssohn, Cesar Franck, Henry Litolff, Frédéric Chopin, Edouard Lalo and Manuel de Falla. 1988 and 1990 arose with EMI two albums with popular piano pieces, 1993, Debussy album. Shortly before her 80th birthday, she played Chopin's Preludes Op Erato. 28 and seven of his etudes one.

• Classic pianist
• Carrier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres ( Knight )
• Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire
• Briton
• Born 1916
• Died in 2005
• Woman