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The Austrian pianist, Eva Wollmann, began musical studies at the age of 7 with her mother, who was a pianist and teacher herself. Later on she was a pupil of Hedwig Kanner-Rosenthal (wife of pianist Moriz Rosenthal) who left Vienna for New York in 1938. She continued her studies at the Conservatory of the City of Vienna, then, 1947–1951, at the Academy of Music in Vienna, with Bruno Seidlhofer, and studied chamber music with Otto Schulhof. She graduated with honours. Her teachers after the Academy studies were Carlo Zecchi, the Italian pianist and conductor (Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome) and Edward Steuermann (Juilliard School, New York). She participated in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1949.
Ever since childhood Eva Wollmann played in public and over the radio. During her short career in the 1950's she was successfull. She toured in Europe, playing solo recitals, and made many solo appearances with orchestra, under the conductors Rudolf Moralt, Otto Ackermann, Hans Swarowsky, Carlo Zecchi, Ettore Gracis, Charles Adler and others. An outstanding interpreter of the classical repertoire, having won, in 1948, a competition of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna for her performance W.A. Mozart's Piano concerto in D minor, she also specialized in contemporary music. In 1952, she appeared at the Festival of Contemporary Music in Salzburg, playing a work by Matsudaira, and in 1953 she performed, with the Wiener Symphoniker, the winning piano concerto - by Kurt Schmidek - of the Wiener Symphoniker contest for Austrian composers. In the mid 1950's she appeared in Salzburg at the Seminar in American Studies, playing works by contemporary American composers. She also made many radio broadcasts.
From 1954 to 1957, Eva Wollmann made a number of recordings for different companies, but then her career seems to stop - it spanned only five years.
Eva Wollmann's recordings: J.S. Bach: Italian Concerto BWV 971, Aria variata in the Italian Manner BWV 989, Overture in the French style BWV 831 (Westminster, 1954?); P.I. Tchaikovsky: The Seasons Op. 37a (Westminster 1954), César Franck: Variations symphoniques for piano and orchestra, with Hans Swarowsky and Vienna Festival Orchestra (Westminster, 1955); Dmitri Shostakovich & S. Prokofieff: Sonatas for Cello and Piano, with Antonio Janigro (Westminster, 1955); W.A. Mozart: Quintet for Piano, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, and Bassoon, KV 452, with The Wind Instruments ensemble of the Wiener Symphoniker (Philips, 1956); A. Lora: Concerto for piano and orchestra, with F. Charles Adler and the Vienna Orchestra (CRI, 1957). |
