| Draga Matkovic | |
|---|---|
Draga Matkovic on her 100th birthday |
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| Background information | |
| Born | November 4, 1907 Zagreb, Austria-Hungary now Croatia |
| Origin | Germany |
| Genres | Classical |
| Occupations | Musical performer |
| Instruments | Piano |
| Years active | 1922–present |
Draga Matkovic (also known as Draga Matković-von Auerhann) (born 4 November 1907) is a contemporary German classical pianist of Croatian origin.
Matkovic was born in Zagreb. She received her first piano lessons at the age of three from her strict adoptive mother, Sidonie Linke (also a pianist) in Aussig (Bohemia) and gave her first public concert in Terezín, then Theresienstadt. With special permission from the government, she was admitted at age 15 to 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 marriage to the violinist Arthur Arnold (1937–1942) she moved to Teplice (formally Teplitz-Schönau) in Bohemia where she was very successful as chamber musician and with orchestral concerts. During World War II she performed for German soldiers in Norway and other countries, on behalf of the German propaganda ministry. Just after the war began, her conductor was imprisoned as Draga Matkovic was performing a concerto by Felix Mendelssohn, 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 public, because she wanted to perform Tchaikovsky's B flat minor piano concerto. In 1945, following her displacement from the Sudetenland, Matkovic found a new home in Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria, where she still lives today.
Matkovic proved her many musical talents not only on the piano but as well occasionally on saxophone, as a conductor, and composer of several music pieces and an operetta (Golden Stars); this libretto was lost during the war. Her favourite composers are Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Liszt, Raff, Grieg and all Nordic and Slavic composers. She practised as a music teacher up to the age of 95 mainly in the area of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. She still performs classical piano music to an incredibly high level, as can be heard on the music samples attached. Her favourite instrument is a Blüthner piano.
Of all pianists, she most admires Vladimir Horowitz and 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 and Váša Příhoda 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 practising concert pianist in the world.
Draga Matkovic's gave a public piano performance on her 100th birthday, November 4, 2007, 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, and pieces by Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn. On her 102nd birthday, November 4, 2009, she performed her own composition "Tarantella" from 1927, which was not published before, as well as the Valse brillante, Op. 34, No. 1, of Moritz Moszkowski. (see YouTube links below.)