Grete Sultan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (September 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Grete Sultan (b. June 21, 1906, Berlin - d. June 26, 2005, New York City) was a concert pianist.

Born into a musical family, she studied piano from an early age with American pianist Richard Buhlig, and later with Leonid Kreutzer, and Edwin Fischer. In 1933, after the National Socialists came to power, she was, as all Jews were, banned from playing in public and could only appear in concerts of the "Juedischer Kulturbund" (Jewish Culture Association).

In 1941, she fled Germany via Lisbon, from where she emigrated to the United States by ship. Soon after her arrival in New York, she became a very close friend of John Cage's, who dedicated his monumental Etudes Australes to her, and was the piano teacher of Christian Wolff. Grete Sultan subsequently played these all over the world. She also performed the music of Alan Hovhaness and Tui St. George Tucker. Sultan was amenable to all forms of music; she stated in a 1996 interview: "Music is music. That's all."

She gave her last recital in 1996, aged 90, at New York's Merkin Concert Hall, performing Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations. Grete Sultan died in a Manhattan hospital five days after her 99th birthday.