Draga Matkovic

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Draga Matkovic
Born November 4, 1907 (1907-11-04) (age 100)
Zagreb, Croatia
Origin Flag of Germany Germany
Genre(s) Classical
Occupation(s) Musical performer
Instrument(s) Piano
Years active 1922 –

Draga Matkovic (also known as Draga Matković - von Auerhann) (born 4 November 1907) is a contemporary German classical pianist of Croatian origin.

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[edit] Life

Matkovic was born in Zagreb. She was taught her first piano lessons at the age of three years by her strict adoptive mother, Sidonie Linke (also a pianist) in Aussig (Bohemia) and gave her first public concerto in Terezín, then Theresienstadt. Due to a special permission of the government she was admitted with 15 years at the German Music Academy of Prague and qualified aged 19 with the title of "professor of piano". She also took violin and singing lessons. In 1926, she first toured as a piano soloist to Poland, and later to other 16 European countries. After her wedding with the violinist Arthur Arnold (1937 to 1942) she moved to Teplice (formally Teplitz-Schönau) in Bohemia where she was very successful as chamber musician and with orchestra concertos. During world war II she performed her art in favour of the German soldiers in Norway amongst others, on behalf of the German propaganda ministry. Just after the war began, her conductor was imprisoned as Draga Matkovic performed the d flat piano concerto of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy whose music was prohibited as non-Aryan. During the two last years of the war she was forbidden by the German authorities to play in the public, because she wanted to perform Tchaikowski's b flat minor piano concerto. In 1945, following the displacement from Sudetenland, Matkovic found her new home in Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria, where she still lives today.

[edit] Work

Matkovic proved her musical multi-talent not only on the piano but as well occasionally with a saxophone, as a conductor and composer of several music pieces and an operetta ("Golden Stars"); this libretto unfortunately got lost during the war. She admires most the musician's oeuvre of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Peter Tschaikowski, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Joachim Raff, Edvard Grieg and all Nordic as well as Slavonian composers. She practiced as a music educationalist up to the age of 95 mainly in the area of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. Up to now, she performs classical piano music on an incredibly high level, as can be heard on the music samples attached.

[edit] Personal life

Her favourite instrument is a Blüthner piano. Of all her pianist colleagues she admires most Vladimir Horowitz as well as Lang Lang due to their brilliance as pianists and their sense of humour on the stage. Matkovic was a friend of the violinists Alfred Pellegrini und Vasa Prihoda and of the actresses Magda Schneider (mother of Romy Schneider) and Olga Chekhova. Draga Matkovic is due to be enrolled in the Guinness World Records list as the oldest living and still practicing concerto pianist of the world.

Matkovic's last public piano performance dates from November 4, 2007, when she celebrated her 100th birthday in Bayerisch Gmain near Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria. She played (among others) the „Polka de la Reine“ by Joachim Raff, the Impromptu op.28 by Hugo Reinhold as well as pieces of Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

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