Felicja Blumental

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Felicja Blumental (28 December 1918 - 31 December 1991) was a pianist born in Warsaw, Poland.

Felicja Blumental was born into a musical family, daughter of a violinist. She began piano lessons at the age of five, and made her debut at the age of ten. She studied at the National Conservatory in Warsaw, taking piano lessons from Zbigniew Drzewiecki (who founded the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition) and composition lessons from the composer Karol Szymanowski. She later studied privately in Switzerland with Józef Turczynski, a noted Chopin interpreter and scholar.

In 1938, she and her husband Markus Mizne moved first to Nice, then to Brazil to escape the growing anti-semitism in Europe. She became a Brazilian citizen, and for the rest of her life championed the music and composers of her adopted country. Her subsequent career saw her settling in Milan in 1962, then in 1973 in London.

Blumental's repertoire was wide and adventurous, ranging from the Portuguese baroque to South American contemporary works. Her numerous recordings also included many forgotten concertos by composers such as Carl Czerny, Ferdinand Ries and John Field. Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote his fifth piano concerto for her, and Krzysztof Penderecki dedicated his Partita for harpsichord and orchestra to her. Her recording of this work won a Grand Prix du Disque of the Charles Cros Academy of France in 1975.

It is, however, her Chopin playing for which she will be most remembered. A pianist of considerable power, despite her diminutive size, her recordings of the Chopin mazurkas, in particular, are considered landmark interpretations.

She died in 1991 in Israel, on one of her many concert tours of the country. She is buried in Tel Aviv's Kiryat Shaul Cemetery. Her daughter, the singer Annette Celine, is one of the organizers of the Felicja Blumental International Music festival, held annually.