Youra Guller

Youra Guller ( born May 14, 1895 in Marseille, † December 31, 1980 in Munich) was a French pianist of Jewish origin. Although admired by Pablo Casals, Alfred Cortot, Ernest Ansermet and others, they remained for decades unnoticed and unmentioned in lexicons of the general public.

Life

Rose- georgette, as she was actually, was the daughter of a Russian father and a Romanian mother. At five years old, she performed in a piano recital at age nine, she was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris. More interested in violin and chamber music, she gave up the piano with Isidore Philipp. She performed with the Violindilettanten Albert Einstein and was friends with Pablo Picasso and André Gide, which she gave piano lessons. Particularly close they stood Clara Haskil, Guiomar Novaes, Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire. Vaslav Nijinsky offered her ballet lessons. They frequented the salon of the Polignac, and was a center of Parisian society. In 1926 she took seven piano pieces for the Welte-Mignon reproducing piano at the recording studio of M. Welte & Söhne.

For a ten-day tour traveled to Shanghai, she remained eight years in China. When she returned to France in the late 1930s, it was too late for an artistic recurrence. After the invasion of the Wehrmacht in France, she had to hide a Jew from the Gestapo, with Countess and patroness Lily Pastré in the castle Pastré in Marseilles district Mont Redon. Ill the meantime, she began to give concerts until the 1950s again - when they needed money. Her husband, the publisher Jacques Schiffrin, had died in 1950 at the age of 58 years.

Her few recordings include 1956, the mazurkas, nocturnes (both by Chopin), the Piano Sonata in B minor by Liszt (1965 ), the last two sonatas of Beethoven (1973 ) as well as pieces by Scarlatti, Rameau, Couperin, Bach and Granados ( 1975). Bach played with preference in transcriptions by Liszt and Busoni. Milhaud dedicated some piano works.

Originally from Munich piano pedagogue Peter Feuchtwanger discovered the still charming Youra 1965 in London again. An avid music critic helped her late comeback. Her debut in New York, she gave in 1971 at the age of 76 years.

In her last years Yehudi Menuhin, Radu Lupu and Martha Argerich came on for their livelihood. Recordings are obtained from Schumann's Symphonic Etudes and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 ( with Ansermet and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande ).

Recordings

  • Beethoven, Op 110
  • Beethoven, Op 111, 2nd movement
  • Chopin, Mazurka Op 50.3
  • Couperin, Rameau, Daquin, Balbastre
  • Scarlatti Sonata L 338
  • Granados Danzas españolas
  • Allusions ( musicline.de )
Isidor Philipp Nocturnes (Chopin) Domenico Scarlatti Jean-Philippe Rameau Enrique Granados Transcription (music) Darius Milhaud Piano Concerto No. 4 (Beethoven) Integrated Authority File
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