Biography

Peter Feuchtwanger: A Short Biography

Peter Feuchtwanger, born in Munich, for many years he teached in London and all over the world in masterclasses. He studied piano with Gerti Rainer (a pupil of Emil von Sauer), Max Egger, Edwin Fischer and Walter Gieseking; composition with Hans Heimler (a pupil of Alban Berg, Heinrich Schenker and Felix Weingartner) and Lennox Berkeley; Indian and Arabic music and philosophy, amongst others with Nazir Jairazbhoy and Dr. Arnold Bake. He gave up an early successful career as a pianist in order to devote himself to composing and teaching.

His greatest musical influence came through his encounter with the Rumanian pianist, Clara Haskil. He has made intensive studies in the bel canto tradition of the golden age of singing. His Variation on an Eastern Folk Tune (Books 1 and 2) won 1st prize at the International Viotti Composition Competition in 1959.

In 1966, Yehudi Menuhin commissioned him to write a work for violin, sitar, tabla and tamboura which Menuhin and Ravi Shankar performed at the Bath Festival that year. This led to their successful recordin g East meets West. Three of Feuchtwanger's Studies in Eastern Idiom for piano were published by Augener's, Galliard and Galaxy. These and a significant number of other works (Introduction and Ragas for 8 Violas and cello or double bass, songs for mezzo and chamber ensemble, a work for violin and tape, and piano pieces), have received broadcast performance on BBC Radio 3, German, Swiss and Japanese radio, and Swedish television. Feuchtwanger himself has often appeared in radio and television interviews and features, and he contributes regularly to various newspapers and periodicals: he has written articles for, amongst others, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Peter Feuchtwanger adjudicates at many international piano competitions and is Vice President of the UK branch of EPTA (European Piano Teachersttt Association). He has held part-time professorship at Musikhochschulen in Karlsruhe and Basel, and was a visiting professor at the Yehudi Menuhin School in England. Due to the exceptionally high standard of his masterclasses held throughout the world since 1967, he has achieved international recognition. He has taught at the Dartington International Summer Scholl, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, La Roque Danteron (France), Musikalische Begegnung Lenzburg (Switzerland), Schubertiaden Schnackenburg (Germany) and Bösendorfer's in Vienna, and continues to teach at the Festival Tibor Varga in Sion and at the International Summer Academy at the Salzburg Mozarteum. He has his own piano festival in the Bavarian town his ancestors left in 1555, Feuchtwangen. Further masterclasses have taken place in the UK (London, Aldeburgh, Edingburgh, Brighton, Tudeley, Harlaxton), Germany (Bonn, Würzburg, Waldkirch, Hüde am Dümmersee, Ettlingen, Kitzingen, Rheinbach, Bad Godesberg, WestLB Akademie Schloß Krickenberg, Erfurt, and Hochschulen in Berlin, Dresden, Hannover, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Hagen, Münster, Osnabrück, Mannheim and Trossingen), France (Paris, Lyon), Switzerland (Sagogn, Basel, Bern, Vevey, Lutry, Raperswil), the Netherlands (Sweelinck Conservatory Amsterdam, Utrecht, Maastricht), Scandinavia (Copenhagen, Oslo, Tromso, Stavander, Harstad), Finland (Helsinki), Isreal (the Music Centre in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv Academy, Haifa), Belgium, Japan, Korea, the United States, and Brazil.

He is also in demand as a lecturer, for example on the subject of Clara Haskil. Lecturing engagements have taken place in a number of the above-mentioned cities and in Saarbrücken. His hugely successful workshop Exercises for curing playing-related disorders in pianists as well as for learning a functionally natural behaviour in piano playing, which he has held on numerous occasions including the conference Performing Arts Medicine and the Physiology of Music organised by the Berliner Philharmonic Orchestra in Autumn 1998, has helped numerous pianists cure their performance-related afflictions.

Peter Feuchtwanger died on 18 Juni 2016 in London.

Link to an german article in the "Lexikon des Klaviers".
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