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Born: February 8, 1894 - Santiago, Chile
Died: May 24, 1949 - Santiago, Chile |
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The prominent Chilean pianist, Rosita Renard (real name: Amelia Rosa Artigas Renard), was the daughter of a building contractor; she showed extraordinary gifts as a child, and made her pianistic debut at the age of 14 playing the Grieg Concerto with the Chilean Symphony Orchestra. A year later the government awarded her a scholarship to study in Berlin at the Stern Conservatory. Arriving there in 1910, Rosita was put in the master-class of Martin Krause, a Franz Liszt pupil today remembered as the teacher of Edwin Fischer, who was Renard's classmate and friend, and Claudio Arrau, her countryman, who was 7 years Renard's junior. The two families were friendly and when it came time for the 9-year-old Claudio Arrau to audition for Krause in 1912, it was Rosita Renard who actually took the young boy by the hand to the audition.
Rosita Renard suffered from a shy and withdrawn personality, which made the strain of concert life too much to bear. It is hard to reconcile the image of this shy, retiring, introverted woman with the grand sweep and power of her playing. Somehow her modesty freed her to ignite before audiences, but the situation caused a tension between the artist and the woman, which precipitated a complete retirement from the stage and returned to Chile...
But in 1945 conductor Erich Kleiber was looking for a pianist to perform a Mozart concerto [in Buenos Aires] and someone suggested Rosita Renard. When he heard her play, Erich Kleiber engaged her immediately. Suddenly her career blossomed. She seemed especially at ease with Erich Kleiber and soon became his favourite pianist, playing Mozart concertos with him throughout Latin America. The rebirth of her career brought her back to the USA. She returned after 22 years to give the only Carnegie Hall concert of her life, the last of her New York recitals, on January 19, 1949. The recital caused a sensation: "Stirring, impressive, enchanting". |
