Eunice Norton on Bach - WTC #13 in F#, Bk I (1/2)

A rare video from 1989 featuring pianist Eunice Norton teaching Bach's Prelude and Fugue #13 in F-sharp Major from book I of the Well-tempered Clavier. Winner of the 1927 London Bach Prize, Norton released her first complete recording of the WTC in 1965 using a numbering method that alternated volumes, placing the works in the same key from each book in succession. Norton often performed Bach's WTC publicly as an entirety, presenting the 96 pieces in traditional order in four successive concerts of twelve pairs of preludes and fugues. She was also among the first pianists to pursue an application of Bach's religious symbolism in his music, an approach which today is considered standard practice both for Bach's liturgical and secular works.See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... pianist Eunice Norton was born in 1908 in Minneapolis. A remarkable child prodigy who had a penchant for learning entire volumes of music instead of single pieces for her piano lessons, she was discovered by England's favorite pianist, Dame Myra Hess, in 1923 when she was touring the United States. Hess prompted the young pianist to move to London with her mother to study with the famed pedagogue Tobias Matthay, Hess' own teacher and mentor.Norton debuted her first year in England with the Queen's Hall Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Henry Wood, and she soon found herself a favorite in that country, playing as soloist with the Manchester, Birmingham, and B.B.C. Symphonies under Sir Hamilton Harty and Sir Adrian Boult. She became a frequent performer at London's Wigmore Hall, and played in Vienna, The Hague, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Budapest, and in Leipzig with the famous Gewandhaus Orchestra. In Berlin she gave a series of 20 recitals to dazzling critical review, including Bach concerts about which musicologist and critic Alfred Einstein wrote, "Her Bach is played as Bach would wish to hear it." In Amsterdam, Ignacy Paderewski admired her Chopin, saying "You will play in all the great halls of the world." In 1927 she won the London Bach Prize and the Chappell Gold Medal.In the United States, she made her formal debut at Carnegie Hall in New York and premiered many new works at Town Hall. After being invited by Koussevitzsky to play with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, she quickly accomplished a record for most performances with American orchestras in one season, and eventually playing with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Chicago symphonies under Dobrowen, Verbrugghen, Stokowski, Ormandy, Stock, Reiner, and Steinberg. Highlights from this period include her premiere recordings of Hindemith's Kammermusik, No. 2, with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Symphony, and Honegger's Concertino with Ormandy and the Minneapolis Symphony.Norton's artistry took a dramatic turn when she heard Artur Schnabel play Beethoven in London's Grotrien Steinweg Hall in 1932. Feeling she had to learn how to play Beethoven this way, she studied with Schnabel in Germany and Italy, and even taught him to play Bach, a composer he had neglected in his own work. The two later started a chamber music series in Pittsburgh, The Pittsburgh New Friends of Music, when the young pianist settled in the US after she married chemist Bernard Lewis. The series still exists today as Pittsburgh's premiere chamber music series, renamed the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society.Norton also founded the Pittsburgh Concert Artists group, designed to offer music majors in Pittsburgh's universities opportunities to perform, and later she created the Peacham Music Festival in Vermont, where many remarkable live recordings of her performances were produced. Norton performed with the American Chamber Orchestra, the Juilliard, Budapest, Griller, and Curtis String Quartets, at the White House for the Roosevelts, a Schnabel memorial concert at Lincoln Center, an all Beethoven recital series at Rockefeller University, and the first radio broadcast of Bach's Goldberg Variations in the United States. She was well known for her master classes, and taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Catholic University, the University of Minnesota, and was Visiting Professor of Piano at Carnegie-Mellon University. Her series of four lectures on the teaching of Artur Schnabel was documented at the University of Pittsburgh in 1987, and her lecture on Matthay's teaching was filmed in November of 1995 at Carnegie-Mellon University.Norton died December 9, 2005, in Vienna, Austria.

Channel: Music
Uploaded: November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am
Author: ejasiewicz

Length: 08:40
Rating: 4.08
Views: 8244

Tags: Bach  Classical  Clavier  Eunice  fugue  keyboard  Klavier  Norton  Piano  prelude  symbolism  Tempered  Well  Well-tempered  WTC  

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