Friedrich Gulda
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Gulda was an Austria
n pianist
and composer who worked in both the classical and jazz fields.
Born in Vienna
as the son of a teacher, Gulda began learning to play the piano from Felix Pazofsky at the Wiener Volkskonservatorium
, aged 7. In 1942, he entered the Vienna Music Academy, where he studied piano and musical theory under Bruno Seidlhofer and Joseph Marx
.
He won first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition in 1946. Initially the jury preferred the Belgian pianist Lode Backx (b. 1922), but when the final vote was taken, Gulda was the winner. One of the jurors, Eileen Joyce
, who favoured Backx, stormed out and claimed the other jurors were unfairly influenced by Gulda's supporters. Gulda began to play concerts worldwide. He made his Carnegie Hall
debut in 1950.Together with Jörg Demus
and Paul Badura-Skoda
, Gulda formed what became known as the "Viennese troika".
Although most famous for his Mozart
and Beethoven
interpretations, Gulda also performed the music of J. S. Bach
(often on clavichord
), Schubert
, Chopin
, Schumann
, Debussy
and Ravel
.
From the 1950s on he cultivated an interest in jazz
, writing several songs and instrumental pieces, and at times combining jazz and classical music in his concerts. In 1956 he performed at Birdland in New York City and at the Newport Jazz Festival
. He organized the International Competition for Modern Jazz in 1966 and he established the International Musikforum, a school for students who wanted to learn improvisation, in Ossiach, Austria, in 1968. He once said:
In jazz he found "the rhythmic drive, the risk, the absolute contrast to the pale, academic approach I had been taught." He also took up playing the baritone saxophone.
Gulda wrote a Prelude and Fugue with a theme suggesting swing
. Keith Emerson
performed it on Emerson, Lake & Palmer's
The Return of the Manticore
. In addition, Gulda composed "Variations on The Doors' 'Light My Fire
'". Another version can be found on Gulda's album As You Like It (1970), an album with standards such as "'Round Midnight
" and "What Is This Thing Called Love?
". In 1980 he wrote his Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra, which has been called "as moving as it is lighthearted", in five movements "involving jazz, a minuet, rock, a smidgen of polka, a march and a cadenza with two spots where a star cellist must improvise."
In 1982, Gulda teamed up with jazz pianist Chick Corea
, who was between the breakup of Return to Forever
and the formation of his Elektric Band
. Issued on The Meeting (Philips, 1984), Gulda and Corea communicate in lengthy improvisations mixing jazz ("Some Day My Prince Will Come
" and the lesser known Miles Davis
song "Put Your Foot Out") and classical music (Brahms' "Wiegenlied"
["Cradle song"]). In the late 1990s, Gulda organised rave parties
, where he performed with the support of several DJs and Go-Go dancers.
These unorthodox practices along with his refusal to follow clothing conventions or announce the program of his concerts in advance earned him the nickname "terrorist pianist". In 1988, he cancelled a performance after officials of the Salzburg Festival
objected to his including jazz musician Joe Zawinul
on the program. When the Vienna Music Academy awarded him its Beethoven Ring in recognition of his performances, he accepted it but then reconsidered and returned it. To promote a concert in 1999, he announced his own death in a press release so that the concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus
could serve as a resurrection party. Nevertheless, Gulda is widely regarded as one of the most outstanding piano players of the 20th century. An example is the following seven-minute audio of the final movement of Mozart's concert K 488,
, with Nikolaus Harnoncourt
conducting the Vienna Philharmonics. His piano students included Martha Argerich
, who called Gulda "my most important influence," and the conductor Claudio Abbado
.
He expressed a wish to die on the birthday of Mozart, the composer he most adored, and did so. He died of heart failure at the age of 69 on 27 January 2000 at his home in Weissenbach, Austria. Gulda is buried in the cemetery of Steinbach am Attersee
, Austria.
He was married twice, first to Paola Loew and then to Yuko Wakiyama. Two of his three sons, Paul and Rico Gulda
, one from each of his marriages, are accomplished pianists.
A documentary film made for television in 2007, So what?! - Friedrich Gulda, tells his life story.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
and composer who worked in both the classical and jazz fields.
Born in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
as the son of a teacher, Gulda began learning to play the piano from Felix Pazofsky at the Wiener Volkskonservatorium
Wiener Volkskonservatorium
The Wiener Volkskonservatorium was a Conservatory in Vienna established between 1923 and 1926 by Ferdinand Grossmann, Emmerich Maday, and Eduard Castle.It was dissolved in 1938 amidst financial difficulties....
, aged 7. In 1942, he entered the Vienna Music Academy, where he studied piano and musical theory under Bruno Seidlhofer and Joseph Marx
Joseph Marx
Joseph Rupert Rudolf Marx was an Austrian composer, teacher and critic.-Life and career:Marx pursued studies in philosophy, art history, German studies, and music at Graz University, earning several degrees including a doctorate in 1909. He began composing seriously in 1908 and over the next four...
.
He won first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition in 1946. Initially the jury preferred the Belgian pianist Lode Backx (b. 1922), but when the final vote was taken, Gulda was the winner. One of the jurors, Eileen Joyce
Eileen Joyce
Eileen Alannah Joyce CMG was an Australian pianist whose career spanned more than 30 years. She lived in England in her adult years....
, who favoured Backx, stormed out and claimed the other jurors were unfairly influenced by Gulda's supporters. Gulda began to play concerts worldwide. He made his Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
debut in 1950.Together with Jörg Demus
Jörg Demus
Jörg Demus is an Austrian pianist.At the age of six, Demus received his first piano lessons. Five years later, at the age of 11, he entered the Vienna Academy of Music, studying piano and conducting. He graduated in 1945, then 17 years old...
and Paul Badura-Skoda
Paul Badura-Skoda
Paul Badura-Skoda is an Austrian pianist.He won first prize in the Austrian Music Competition in 1947. In 1949, he performed with distinguished conductors like Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan...
, Gulda formed what became known as the "Viennese troika".
Although most famous for his Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
and Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
interpretations, Gulda also performed the music of J. S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
(often on clavichord
Clavichord
The clavichord is a European stringed keyboard instrument known from the late Medieval, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. Historically, it was widely used as a practice instrument and as an aid to composition, not being loud enough for larger performances. The clavichord produces...
), Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
, Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
and Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
.
From the 1950s on he cultivated an interest in jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, writing several songs and instrumental pieces, and at times combining jazz and classical music in his concerts. In 1956 he performed at Birdland in New York City and at the Newport Jazz Festival
Newport Jazz Festival
The Newport Jazz Festival is a music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island, USA. It was established in 1954 by socialite Elaine Lorillard, who, together with husband Louis Lorillard, financed the festival for many years. The couple hired jazz impresario George Wein to organize the...
. He organized the International Competition for Modern Jazz in 1966 and he established the International Musikforum, a school for students who wanted to learn improvisation, in Ossiach, Austria, in 1968. He once said:
In jazz he found "the rhythmic drive, the risk, the absolute contrast to the pale, academic approach I had been taught." He also took up playing the baritone saxophone.
Gulda wrote a Prelude and Fugue with a theme suggesting swing
Swing (genre)
Swing music, also known as swing jazz or simply swing, is a form of jazz music that developed in the early 1930s and became a distinctive style by 1935 in the United States...
. Keith Emerson
Keith Emerson
Keith Noel Emerson is an English keyboard player and composer. Formerly a member of the Keith Emerson Trio, John Brown's Bodies, The T-Bones, V.I.P.s, P.P. Arnold's backing band, and The Nice , he was a founder of Emerson, Lake & Palmer , one of the early supergroups, in 1970...
performed it on Emerson, Lake & Palmer's
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, also known as ELP, are an English progressive rock supergroup. They found success in the 1970s and sold over forty million albums and headlined large stadium concerts. The band consists of Keith Emerson , Greg Lake and Carl Palmer...
The Return of the Manticore
The Return of the Manticore
The Return of the Manticore is a 4-disc retrospective on the band Emerson, Lake & Palmer's career. It was released in 1993 and features several new recordings of previously released songs, most notably a studio recording of "Pictures at an Exhibition," presented in Dolby Surround Sound...
. In addition, Gulda composed "Variations on The Doors' 'Light My Fire
Light My Fire
"Light My Fire" is a song by The Doors which was recorded in August 1966 and released the first week of January 1967 on the Doors' debut album. Released as a single in April, it spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and one week on the Cash Box Top 100, nearly a year after...
'". Another version can be found on Gulda's album As You Like It (1970), an album with standards such as "'Round Midnight
'Round Midnight (song)
Round Midnight" is a 1944 jazz standard by pianist Thelonious Monk. Jazz artists Cootie Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Pepper, and Miles Davis have further embellished the song, with songwriter Bernie Hanighen adding lyrics...
" and "What Is This Thing Called Love?
What Is This Thing Called Love?
"What Is This Thing Called Love?"is a 1929 popular song written by Cole Porter, for the musical Wake Up and Dream. It was first performed by Elsie Carlisle in March 1929. The song has become a popular jazz standard and one of Porter's most often played compositions.Wake Up and Dream ran for 263...
". In 1980 he wrote his Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra, which has been called "as moving as it is lighthearted", in five movements "involving jazz, a minuet, rock, a smidgen of polka, a march and a cadenza with two spots where a star cellist must improvise."
In 1982, Gulda teamed up with jazz pianist Chick Corea
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...
, who was between the breakup of Return to Forever
Return to Forever
Return to Forever is a jazz fusion group founded and led by keyboardist Chick Corea. Through its existence, the band has cycled through a number of different members, with the only consistent band mate of Corea's being bassist Stanley Clarke...
and the formation of his Elektric Band
Chick Corea Elektric Band
Chick Corea Elektric Band is a jazz fusion band, led by pianist Chick Corea. Following the demise of Return to Forever, Corea established the musical ensemble in 1986. Following a long hiatus, the band reunited to produce "To the Stars" in 2004....
. Issued on The Meeting (Philips, 1984), Gulda and Corea communicate in lengthy improvisations mixing jazz ("Some Day My Prince Will Come
Some Day My Prince Will Come
"Some Day My Prince Will Come" is a popular song from Walt Disney's 1937 animated movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was written by Larry Morey & Frank Churchill , and performed by Adriana Caselotti...
" and the lesser known Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
song "Put Your Foot Out") and classical music (Brahms' "Wiegenlied"
Brahms' Lullaby
Cradle Song is the common name for a number of children's lullabies with similar lyrics, the original of which was Johannes Brahms's Wiegenlied: Guten Abend, gute Nacht , Op. 49, No. 4, published in 1868 and widely known as Brahms's Lullaby...
["Cradle song"]). In the late 1990s, Gulda organised rave parties
Rave
Rave, rave dance, and rave party are parties that originated mostly from acid house parties, which featured fast-paced electronic music and light shows. At these parties people dance and socialize to dance music played by disc jockeys and occasionally live performers...
, where he performed with the support of several DJs and Go-Go dancers.
These unorthodox practices along with his refusal to follow clothing conventions or announce the program of his concerts in advance earned him the nickname "terrorist pianist". In 1988, he cancelled a performance after officials of the Salzburg Festival
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
objected to his including jazz musician Joe Zawinul
Joe Zawinul
Josef Erich Zawinul was an Austrian-American jazz keyboardist and composer.First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with trumpeter Miles Davis, and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, an innovative musical genre that combined jazz with...
on the program. When the Vienna Music Academy awarded him its Beethoven Ring in recognition of his performances, he accepted it but then reconsidered and returned it. To promote a concert in 1999, he announced his own death in a press release so that the concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus
Konzerthaus, Vienna
The Konzerthaus in Vienna was opened 1913. It is situated in the third district just at the edge of the first district in Vienna. Since it was founded it has always tried to emphasise both tradition and innovative musical styles.In 1890 the first ideas for a Haus für Musikfeste came about...
could serve as a resurrection party. Nevertheless, Gulda is widely regarded as one of the most outstanding piano players of the 20th century. An example is the following seven-minute audio of the final movement of Mozart's concert K 488,
, with Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Nikolaus Harnoncourt is an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier. Starting out as a classical cellist, he founded his own period instrument ensemble in the 1950s, and became a pioneer of the Early Music movement...
conducting the Vienna Philharmonics. His piano students included Martha Argerich
Martha Argerich
Martha Argerich is an Argentine pianist.-Early life:Argerich was born in Buenos Aires and started playing the piano at age three...
, who called Gulda "my most important influence," and the conductor Claudio Abbado
Claudio Abbado
Claudio Abbado, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , is an Italian conductor. He has served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera,...
.
He expressed a wish to die on the birthday of Mozart, the composer he most adored, and did so. He died of heart failure at the age of 69 on 27 January 2000 at his home in Weissenbach, Austria. Gulda is buried in the cemetery of Steinbach am Attersee
Steinbach am Attersee
Steinbach am Attersee is a municipality of the Vöcklabruck district in the Austrian state of Upper Austria. It is situated in the Hausruckviertel region on the eastern banks of the Attersee , part of the Salzkammergut area....
, Austria.
He was married twice, first to Paola Loew and then to Yuko Wakiyama. Two of his three sons, Paul and Rico Gulda
Rico Gulda
Rico Gulda is an Austrian classical pianist and producer.The son of the renowned enigmatic pianist Friedrich Gulda and Yuko Wakiyama, Rico grew up in Munich, Germany and began taking piano lessons at age 5. He received piano instruction at the Musikhochschule Wien as well as with master pianists,...
, one from each of his marriages, are accomplished pianists.
A documentary film made for television in 2007, So what?! - Friedrich Gulda, tells his life story.
External links
- Gulda-Werkstatt Official Homepage with a complete work list
- Youngrok Lee's Gulda appreciation pages
- A documentary on Friedrich Gulda entitled "So What!?"
- Eight Friedrich Gulda performances (ClassicalTV)