Clara Haskil

Clara Haskil (7 January 1895 – 7 December 1960) was a Romanian classical pianist, renowned as an interpreter of the classical and early romantic repertoire. She was particularly noted for her performances and recordings of Mozart. She was also noted as an interpreter of Beethoven, Schumann, and Scarlatti. Haskil was born into a Jewish family in Bucharest, Romania. Her father Isaac Haskil (1858–1899) immigrated to Romania from Bessarabia (then part of the Russian Empire); he died from acute pneumonia when Clara was only 4 years old. Her mother Berthe Haskil (née Moscona) (1866–1917), of Sephardic origin, was one of six children of David Moscona and Rebecca Aladjem. Haskil studied in Vienna under Richard Robert (whose pupils also included Rudolf Serkin and George Szell) and briefly with Ferruccio Busoni. She later moved to France, where she studied with Gabriel Fauré's pupil Joseph Morpain, whom she always credited as one of her greatest influences. The same year she entered the Conservatoire de Paris, officially to study with Alfred Cortot although most of her instruction came from Lazare Lévy and Mme Giraud-Latarse, and graduated at age 15 with a Premier Prix. Upon graduating, Haskil began to tour Europe, though her career was cut short by one of the numerous physical ailments she suffered throughout her life. In 1913 she was fitted with a plaster cast in an attempt to halt the progression of scoliosis. Frequent illnesses, combined with extreme stage fright that appeared in 1920, kept her from critical or financial success. Most of her life was spent in abject poverty. It was only after World War II, during a series of concerts in the Netherlands in 1949, that she began to win acclaim. In 1942 she moved to Vevey in Switzerland. Not long after that she was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur by the French state.