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Musician From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liana Șerbescu (born 25 August 1934), is a Romanian pianist, piano pedagogue and musicologist, a pioneer in the field of women's music. Through her many-sided activity as a performing pianist, researcher and writer, she contributed to enriching the repertoire of classical piano music.[1][2][3]
Liana Șerbescu was born in Bucharest to engineer Florian Șerbescu and pianist Silvia Chelaru-Șerbescu. Her mother's family counted several generations of musicians and composers.[4][5][6] Liana studied with several well-known Romanian teachers: Constanța Erbiceanu, Cella Delavrancea, Dagobert Buchholz and Silvia Serbescu, at the Bucharest Music Conservatory, and later with Guido Agosti at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. A winner of three National Young Pianists Competitions (1953, 1955 and 1957), she performed with all the Romanian orchestras. She has toured in France, Germany, the Soviet Union, China, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Norway, Sweden, Italy,[7] England, Spain, the Netherlands and the US, and collaborated, among others, with the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux,[8][9] the Stockholm Philharmonic,[10] the Zagreb Radio and TV Orchestra,[11] the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Münchener Kammeroper Orchestra[12] and the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra (USA).[13] Liana Serbescu played under the baton of Charles Dutoit,[14] Vaclav Smetacek, Sergiu Comissiona,[10] Erich Bergel, Lawrence Foster,[15] Emil Simon, Renard Czajkowski, Daniel Chabrun, Eugène Bozza,[16] Itay Talgam,[17] Claire Gibault,[18] Mihai Brediceanu,[19] and Mircea Cristescu.[20]
In December 1974 Șerbescu left communist Romania and, following brief stays in Norway and Sweden, settled in the Netherlands.[21] Following her illegal emigration, all her recordings were deleted from the Romanian Radio and Television phonoteque, and her name no longer appeared in any publication – not even in the monograph on Silvia Șerbescu by Iosif Sava and Florian Șerbescu. She worked for 22 years as a piano teacher at the "Brabants Conservatorium" of the Tilburg Katholieke Leergangen University.[22] However, her main activity was the promotion of the work of women composers.[23][24] Her most notable achievement in this field was the first recording, on two CDs, of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's hitherto unknown Piano Sonatas and of the piano cycle "The Year" (1986–1987). In addition, she edited in collaboration with Barbara Heller the first publication of those works (Furore Verlag, 1989). Another significant contribution to the piano repertoire was Liana Șerbescu's discovery of Ethel Smyth's piano music at the British Library Manuscripts Department, that she subsequently recorded on a double CD by CPO (1995)[25] and edited at the prestigious publishers Breitkopf & Härtel (2001–2002)[26]
In 1980 she performed at the Bonn First International Festival of Women Composers Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto with the French conductor Claire Gibault.[18] Subsequently, she often performed in Germany and the Netherlands with the Köln "Clara Schumann" Women's Orchestra led by Elke Mascha Blankenburg. After the 1989 Romanian Revolution she resumed playing in Romania. The composer Boldizsár Csiky greeted her return with the words: "After 18 years of absence, together we cheer: Welcome home!"[27]
Liana Șerbescu was married from 1965 to 1998 to the theoretical physicist Mihai Gavrilă, with whom she has two children: Ioa-Silva Gavrilă and Dariu Mihai Gavrilă.[21][28]
In addition to the standard classical and romantic repertoire, her programs often included all-Bach piano recitals and [29] 20th century music, for which she had a special affinity. Bartók’s Piano Concerto no.1,[30] Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments[31] and "The Four Temperaments" for piano and orchestra by Paul Hindemith[32] were given their Romanian premieres by Liana Serbescu. She also premiered in several countries piano works by Romanian composers and recorded them for radio broadcasts. In 1976 she premiered in Osnabruck Alfred Böckmann's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.[33]
Music by women composers, spanning four centuries, had a special and consistent place in her repertoire. She played Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto with several orchestras, as well as solo pieces by various women composers, some of which were dedicated to her.[34]
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