Edward Auer
piano (USA)
November 17 at 6 p.m.
Edward Auer has long been recognized as a leading interpreter of the works of Chopin. As the first American to win a prize in the prestigious International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1965, he has returned to Poland for well over 20 concert tours, the last one three years ago.
Mr. Auer is currently immersed in the project of recording most of his vast Chopin repertoire. Timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth in 1810, the series will include the Concertos, the Sonatas, two volumes of Mazurkas and Polonaises, and many other works. Chopin Nocturnes and Scherzos Volumes I and II, and The Two Concertos (recorded with the Shanghai Quartet and bassist Peter Lloyd) have already appeared on the Culture/Demain label, and the Sonatas will be coming out soon. Long respected pianist and critic Harris Goldsmith says of the first Nocturnes recording, “Auer has a knack of surpassing the listener’s expectations by way of all sorts of felicitous turns of phrase and tempo, but thankfully the details of his irrepressible individuality are never permitted to break the long line of these diversified tone poems.”
Born in New York December 7, 1941, Edward Auer grew up in Los Angeles, studying piano with Aube Tzerko, a Schnabel protégé, and composition with Leonard Stein, a student of Arnold Schoenberg. A precocious chamber musician and the son of a accomplished amateur violist, he was playing the Mozart piano quartets and the Schumann quintet with his father and his friends when he was just eight years old.
Already well known in the Los Angeles area in his early teens, he was winning competitions and appearing in concerts there, both as soloist and in chamber music.
After studies with Rosina Lhévinne at the Juilliard School (with full scholarship) ARTIST BIOGRAPHY Edward Auer he went to Paris on a Fulbright Study Grant to work with Julius Katchen. During his Paris stay he won the Grand Prix in the Concours Marguerite Long. He also holds prizes in the Tchaikovsky, Queen Elisabeth and Vienna Beethoven Competitions. Now, years later, these and other contests invite him to serve on their juries. The prize in the Tchaikovsky led to an invitation to the White House. In addition to his full-time teaching commitment at Indiana University, Auer continues to perform and record. He has played solo recitals and concertos in over 30 countries* on five continents, collaborating with such eminent conductors as Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Chailly, Herbert Blomstedt, Sergiu Comissiona, Robert Shaw, and Charles Dutoit.
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*US, Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, Bermuda, Great Britain, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea.