Annie Fischer
| Annie Fischer | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
July 5, 1914 Budapest, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | April 10, 1995 (aged 80) Budapest, Hungary |
| Alma mater | Franz Liszt Academy of Music |
| Spouse(s) | Aladar Toth |
| Awards | International Franz Liszt Piano Competition, 1933 |
Annie Fischer (July 5, 1914 – April 10, 1995) was a Hungarian-Jewish classical pianist.
Fischer was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, and studied in that city at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music with Ernő Dohnányi. In 1933 she won the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in her native city. Throughout her career she played mainly in Europe and Australia, but was seldom heard in the United States until late in her lifetime, giving only two concerts there by that time.
She was married to influential critic and musicologist (and later director of the Budapest Opera) Aladar Toth (1898–1968); she is buried next to him in Budapest.
Fischer, who was Jewish, fled with her husband to Sweden in 1940, after Hungary during World War II joined the Axis powers. After the war, in 1946, she and Toth returned to Budapest. She died there in 1995.
Her playing has been praised for its "characteristic intensity" and "effortless manner of phrasing" (David Hurwitz), as well as its technical power and spiritual depth. She was greatly admired by such contemporaries as Otto Klemperer and Sviatoslav Richter; Richter wrote that "Annie Fischer is a great artist imbued with a spirit of greatness and genuine profundity." The Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini praised the "childlike simplicity, immediacy and wonder" he found in her playing. Her interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Schumann, as well as Hungarian composers like Béla Bartók continue to receive the highest praise from pianists and critics.
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