Clara Haskil

The Romanian pianist Clara Haskil (1895-1960) received her first piano lessons from her mother at the age of three and entered the Bucharest Conservatory three years later. Wenn she was seven she came to Vienna with her uncle where she played for pianist Anton Door, who wrote an article about her talent. This was noticed by Richard Robert (teacher of Rudolf Serkin and George Szell) and Haskil began to study with him. Her public debut she gave when she was eight-years old playing a Mozart Concerto. Eleven years old she moved to Paris to study at the Conservatoire. There she started in the elementary class and two years later in the class of Alfred Cortot. At the age of fifteen she obtained the premier prix from the Conservatoire whose jury included Gabriel Fauré, Moritz Moszkowski, Raoul Pugno and Ricardo Viñes.

Clara Haskil gave several successful concerts in Europe, but by 1913 her health began to fail with the onset of scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. She had to stay four years in hospital recuperating in Switzerland before she could return to Paris to continue her career. Haskil than gave a relatively small number of concerts in Europe and it was not until 1924 that she made her debut in America and two years later in the United Kingdom. From 1927 Haskil lived in a Paris with her uncle. With the help of friends, among them the Princesse de Polignac, she could give several concerts, just to have enough income to survive. In Paris she also met her compatriot Dinu Lipatti who just became a student of Cortot. Both Romanian, they supported each other and became good friends.

With the outbreak of World war II Haskil had to flee France before the Nazi invasion and succeed to escape to Switzerland. After the war she returned to Paris and began to work again on her career giving some concerts in London.

It was only in 1949 that a series of concerts and radio broadcasts in Holland helped enormously to build Haskils reputation. From 1950 on she was invited to perform allready with the worlds greatest orchestras and conductors in Europe and America. In 1950 also a very successful partnership started with the Belgium violinist Arthur Grumiaux. In fact Dinu Lipatti had to cancel his intended collaboration with Grumiaux because of his illness who led to his early death in 1950, and Haskil, on proposal of Lipatti, took over.

Haskils late international career between 1950/60 which brought her fame was several times interrupted by problems with her poor health. Her death on December 7th 1960 however came unexpected when she stumbled and fell down on the stairs at the railway station in Brussel where she arrived for a concert with Grumiaux. With her death the world lost one of the greatest musicians of all times.