Mr. Pressler, on Sunday, as you celebrate your 95. Birthday. You will be happy?
Yes, of course. Especially if it stays as it is at the moment is that I still play and can teach, that I have important concerts. The Polish Pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski has proven that it can also give you with a hundred years of concerts, which are beautiful and from the audience to be enjoyed.
Would you say that you have to look at the age with a different view on the notes than in the past?
I don’t know actually. Because I don’t feel the age when I play. I feel only the music. But maybe the view is changing in fact, one discovers, suddenly, an expression of possibilities that were not an earlier, perhaps.
in 1946, they won the Debussy piano competition in San Francisco. That was the Start to happiness?
This happiness I owed to the pianist Paul Loyonnet that I appeared in back in Israel. He, who knew Debussy personally, showed me how to play Debussy. We were together for at least three weeks, the three most important weeks in my life. They played in this competition, by the way, behind a curtain so that the judges could not see the player.
are you born in 1923 in Magdeburg? What memories do you have of that time?
I remember the beautiful Cathedral. I went to Cathedral high school, I had to leave then, but as a Jew. And I remember my piano teacher. He was the Organist of the Church, and gave me lessons, even though it was not allowed him. He came to me or I went to him, as long as I was allowed to use the tram. He has a place in my heart.
How have you experienced the Nazis?
Cruel. When I went on the road, were the boys behind me, cursing me and wanted to beat me. These were the same boys with whom I went to school, I was sort of friends with. This sudden Change was huge. The shock is still in the bones.
1939 is succeeded of your family in the last Moment, the escape from Germany.
We had come to Trieste and got there permission to travel to Palestine. On the day we docked in Haifa, entered Italy with Mussolini in the war.
her Name is inseparably connected with the Beaux Art Trio, which played for 53 years and for all this time, in alternating casts.
As we, the Trio founded, I had the luck to find two great people. The violinist Daniel Guilet, former concertmaster of Arturo Toscanini, and Bernard Greenhouse, probably one of the best cellists that ever lived.
With the Beaux arts Trio, you have encountered already in the 50s in Germany. Many Jews have shunned the country at the time.
I was married at the time with an enormously Patriotic Israeli. She said: I am willing to understand that you want to play in Germany, because you’re there with the Trio successfully. But I insist that the money, the merit of Israel comes to you there. If you want to stay married to me, you give me the right to distribute it. So it happened, and a large amount went to Israel for orphans and immigrant children, for the Sick and the Healthy.
Since the end of the trio you are as a soloist on the move: a role-exchange with 85.
Yes, after all the years with the Beaux arts Trio, the greatest miracle came in actually. I was great. The critics said: Why has he spent so long with the trio of game? He should have been playing alone. For me, that was a pleasant Surprise.
you are not as a Pianist of the foaming button lion, but is a rather gentle player, is how it seems to me, immune to Exaggerations.
Exaggeration does not mean that you are not honest, that you really listen to what the music says. If you are honest, you can’t overdo it. Then Exaggeration is a bit Ugly. You feel it as dishonest, And honesty is a huge virtue to be proud of. For me as a Pianist, in music means, how it is originally meant to be.
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concert pianist Menahem Pressler is wonderful
, Christian Schmidt
your this year Deutsche Grammophon released the CD “Clair de Lune” is dedicated to the life of her friend Annabelle Weidenfeld. A Declaration Of Love?
Yes I have the plate for you. She is the reason that I want to live, I enjoy life. I love you infinitely. It is also lasting me, one could almost say, forces me to keep playing.
