Louis Kentner
Encyclopedia
Louis Kentner was a Hungarian
, later British
, pianist
who excelled in the works of Chopin
and Liszt
, as well as the Hungarian repertoire.
He was born Lajos Kentner in Karwin
in Austrian Silesia
(present-day Karviná
, Czech Republic
), to Hungarian parents. He received his education as a musician at the Royal Academy of Music
in Budapest
from 1911 to 1922, studying with Arnold Székely (piano
), Hans Koessler
and Zoltán Kodály
(composition
), and Leo Weiner
(chamber music
).
Kentner commenced his concert career at the age of 15. He was awarded 5th Prize at the 1932 International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition
in Warsaw
; and he won a Liszt prize in Budapest. He moved to England
permanently in 1935. He gave radio broadcasts of the complete sonatas of Beethoven
and Schubert
, the complete Well-Tempered Clavier (Bach
), and the complete Années de Pèlerinage
(Liszt). He was President of the British Liszt Society for many years, until his death.
At the composer's request, he was the soloist at the Hungarian premiere of Bartók
's Piano Concerto No. 2
, in Budapest in 1933, under Otto Klemperer
; and the first European performance of the Concerto No. 3
(in London
, under Sir Adrian Boult
, 27 November 1946). He and Yehudi Menuhin
(his wife's brother-in-law) gave the first performance of William Walton
's Violin Sonata, at Zürich
on 30 September 1949.
His playing was heard in Richard Addinsell
's Warsaw Concerto
from the soundtrack of the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight
. However, his hands were not shown, and he preferred to be uncredited as he did not think that being associated with film music would help his career. When the piece achieved worldwide popularity, however, he was happy to acknowledge his involvement.
He was a member of many music competition juries. He also composed, his output including orchestral works, chamber music, piano pieces and songs.
(Lady Harcourt), whose other daughter Diana
became Yehudi Menuhin
's second wife in 1947.
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, later British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, 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:...
who excelled in the works of 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"....
and Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
, as well as the Hungarian repertoire.
He was born Lajos Kentner in Karwin
Karviná
Karviná is a city in Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic, on the Olza River. It is administrative center of Karviná District. Karviná lies in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia and is one of the most important coal mining centers in the Czech Republic. Together with neighboring...
in Austrian Silesia
Austrian Silesia
Austrian Silesia , officially the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia was an autonomous region of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Austrian Empire, from 1867 a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary...
(present-day Karviná
Karviná
Karviná is a city in Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic, on the Olza River. It is administrative center of Karviná District. Karviná lies in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia and is one of the most important coal mining centers in the Czech Republic. Together with neighboring...
, Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
), to Hungarian parents. He received his education as a musician at the Royal Academy of Music
Franz Liszt Academy of Music
The Franz Liszt Academy of Music is a concert hall and music conservatory in Budapest, Hungary, founded on November 14, 1875...
in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
from 1911 to 1922, studying with Arnold Székely (piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
), Hans Koessler
Hans von Koessler
Hans von Koessler was a German composer, conductor and music teacher. In Hungary, where he worked for 26 years, he was known as János Koessler....
and Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is best known internationally as the creator of the Kodály Method.-Life:Born in Kecskemét, Kodály learned to play the violin as a child....
(composition
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
), and Leo Weiner
Leo Weiner
Leo Weiner , was one of the leading Hungarian music educators of the first half of the twentieth century and a composer.- Education :Weiner was born in Budapest. He had his first music and piano lessons from his brother, and later studied at the Academy of Music in Budapest, studying with János ...
(chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
).
Kentner commenced his concert career at the age of 15. He was awarded 5th Prize at the 1932 International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition
International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition
The International Chopin Piano Competition , often referred to as the Chopin Competition, is a piano competition held in Warsaw, Poland to honour the name of Frédéric Chopin. It is one of the oldest and most prestigious music competitions in the world...
in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
; and he won a Liszt prize in Budapest. He moved to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
permanently in 1935. He gave radio broadcasts of the complete sonatas of 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...
and 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...
, the complete Well-Tempered Clavier (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...
), and the complete Années de Pèlerinage
Années de Pèlerinage
Années de pèlerinage is a set of three suites by Franz Liszt for solo piano. Liszt's complete musical style is evident in this masterwork, which ranges from virtuosic fireworks to sincerely moving emotional statements. His musical maturity can be seen evolving through his experience and travel...
(Liszt). He was President of the British Liszt Society for many years, until his death.
At the composer's request, he was the soloist at the Hungarian premiere of Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
's Piano Concerto No. 2
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Bartók)
Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, Sz. 95, BB 101 is one of the composer's more accessible compositions for audiences. It is especially notorious for being one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire....
, in Budapest in 1933, under Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century.-Biography:Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany...
; and the first European performance of the Concerto No. 3
Piano Concerto No. 3 (Bartók)
Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3 in E major, Sz. 119, BB 127 is a musical composition for piano and orchestra. The piece was composed in 1945 by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók during the final months of his life. It consists of three movements.-Context:...
(in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, under Sir Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
, 27 November 1946). He and Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE was a Russian Jewish American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985...
(his wife's brother-in-law) gave the first performance of William Walton
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
's Violin Sonata, at Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
on 30 September 1949.
His playing was heard in Richard Addinsell
Richard Addinsell
Richard Stewart Addinsell was a British composer, best known for film music, primarily his Warsaw Concerto, composed for the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight .-Life:...
's Warsaw Concerto
Warsaw Concerto
The Warsaw Concerto is a single-movement piano concerto written for the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight . It was written by British composer Richard Addinsell...
from the soundtrack of the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight
Dangerous Moonlight
Dangerous Moonlight is a 1941 British film, starring Anton Walbrook, best known for its score written by Richard Addinsell with orchestrations by Roy Douglas, which includes the Warsaw Concerto...
. However, his hands were not shown, and he preferred to be uncredited as he did not think that being associated with film music would help his career. When the piece achieved worldwide popularity, however, he was happy to acknowledge his involvement.
He was a member of many music competition juries. He also composed, his output including orchestral works, chamber music, piano pieces and songs.
Private life
His first wife was the pianist Ilona Kabós. That marriage ended in 1945, and he then married Griselda Gould, daughter of the pianist Evelyn SuartEvelyn Suart
Evelyn Suart, Lady Harcourt was a notable English pianist.She was born in 1881 in Sindapore, India, the daughter of Brigadier-General W. H. Suart, and she spent some of her early childhood there. She also lived for periods in Gibraltar and England. Her piano studies were with Storck in...
(Lady Harcourt), whose other daughter Diana
Diana Gould (dancer)
Diana Gould, later Diana Menuhin, Baroness Menuhin was a British ballerina and occasional actress and singer, who is best remembered as the second wife of the violinist Yehudi Menuhin...
became Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE was a Russian Jewish American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985...
's second wife in 1947.