Annie Fischer

Annie Fischer, the Hungarian piano virtuoso who spent much of her adult life in England, earned particular acclaim for the nuanced insight she brought to Mozart's piano concertos and recorded principally with EMI. She first appeared publicly at age ten and pursued advanced training under Ernst von Dohnányi at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. A commanding account of Liszt's Sonata in B minor secured her the top award at the 1933 Liszt International Piano Competition, yet the outbreak of war soon halted her emerging international schedule and prompted her to take refuge in Sweden. Once hostilities ended she resettled in Hungary; although she performed in New York for the first time in 1961, engagements in the United States remained infrequent and she concentrated her activities on the European mainland. Within her homeland she enjoyed exceptional esteem and received the Kossuth Prize on three separate occasions. While Mozart and Beethoven formed the core of her repertory, she also distinguished herself in later Romantic literature and selected contemporary scores, most memorably Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3. Despite late-career recognition as one of the era's foremost pianists, she recorded sparingly and approached the studio with reluctance. After her death in 1995 the Hungaroton label released her complete cycle of the thirty-two Beethoven piano sonatas, a project to which she had devoted nearly two decades yet had withheld from publication during her lifetime. An intense and forceful interpreter guided chiefly by personal inspiration, she proved peerless in works that rewarded such inward conviction, notably Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata.