Silvia Șerbescu
| Silvia Șerbescu | |
|---|---|
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| Background information | |
| Born | January 27, 1903 |
| Origin | Romania |
| Died | April 22, 1965 (aged 62) |
| Occupation(s) | Pianist Piano professor |
Silvia Șerbescu (January 27, 1903 – April 22, 1965) was a Romanian concert pianist. She was one of the first important concert pianists emerging from the Romanian piano school, and a distinguished piano pedagogue. Her interpretations of Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Debussy were memorable. From 1948 until 1965 she was a piano professor at the Bucharest Music Conservatory.
Silvia Șerbescu was born to a family dedicated to intellectual pursuits. Her father, Gheorghe Chelaru, was a professor of Latin, Greek and Romanian at the elite Gheorghe Lazar secondary school in Bucharest, who composed didactic manuals of Romanian language and literature for all degrees. He also was the preceptor of King Ferdinand and Queen Maria’s children Nicholas and Maria. Her mother, Eliza Bunescu, was the daughter of Ioan Bunescu and grand-daughter of Gheorghe Ionescu, both notable composers of choral music.
She started her musical studies at the Bucharest Royal Academy of Music – piano with Constanța Erbiceanu (a disciple of Carl Reinecke, Max Reger and Moritz Moszkowski, and one of the founders of the Romanian piano school), harmony and counterpoint with Dumitru Georgescu Kiriac and Alfonso Castaldi, graduating at the same time the Mathematics Faculty of the University of Bucharest. Further in Paris, at the École Normale de Musique, she studied with Lazare Lévy and Alfred Cortot and graduated with highest honors and a “licence de concert”.
Her debut in Bucharest in 1928, with Liszt's Piano Concerto nr. 1, and a recital one year later, was perceived as sensational. George Breazul wrote: “…Silvia Serbescu steps into the Romanian musical life, best honouring our musical aspirations”. Constanța Erbiceanu considered Silvia Serbescu’s art as “a synthesis of masculine thinking and feminine sensitivity”. Silvia’s large and expressive hands similar to Clara Schumann’s, could be the anatomic clue to the “monumental character of her interpretations, the sense of space, of wide, open horizons” mentioned by the musicologist Iosif Sava when he tried to characterize Silvia’s pianistic style. In addition, a genuine, existential interpretative involvement in Silvia Șerbescu’s playing may explain the powerful impact she had on her audience.
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