GINA  BACHAUER

(b Athens, 21 May 1913; d Athens, 22 Aug 1976). Greek pianist. Her father was from an Austrian family which had settled in Greece in 1877, while her mother came from near Trieste. Bachauer studied at the Athens Conservatory under Woldemar Freeman and later at the Ecole Normale, Paris, with Cortot. Freeman introduced her to Rachmaninoff, with whom she also took lessons. Her French solo début took place in the Salle Chopin, Paris, in 1929, and she first played in England in 1932 at the Aeolian Hall, London. In 1933 she won the medal of honour at an international piano competition in Vienna, and in the 1930s played concertos with the Paris SO conducted by Monteux and the Athens SO under Mitropoulos. For several years following her marriage in 1936 to John Christodoulo she lived in Alexandria, giving over 600 concerts for allied troops in various parts of northern Egypt during World War II. In 1946 she made her British orchestral début at the Albert Hall, London, playing Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the New London Orchestra under Alec Sherman. Following her American début at New York’s Town Hall in 1950, she undertook many coast-to-coast tours of the USA. After the death of her first husband she married Alec Sherman in 1951.

Bachauer was at her most formidable in the 19th- and early 20th-century repertory, impressing with the strength and breadth of her keyboard command and essentially balanced musicianship. Her recordings of concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and Grieg, as well as solo works by Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky, have been re-issued on compact disc.