Agi Jambor - Bach Fantaisia in A Minor

To watch Agi Jambor live on video talking, and playing Bach with Joseph Stephens please go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG0Fee31utg
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AGI JAMBOR Notes by Joseph Stephens




These notes have not yet been read by Mme Jambor and due to her modesty she will probably not be pleased by them.
Agi Jambor was born in Budapest in 1909. A child prodigy, she made her debut with orchestra at the age of 12 and published her first composition at 15. Invited by the great pianist and conductor, Edwin Fisher to be his protegee in Berlin she moved there at 17 and continued her performing career to great acclaim. At 22 she moved to Paris and retired from the concert world for the first time seeking obscurity by playing the piano for a dance studio. However, the great pianist-conductor Alfred Cortot discovered her presence in Paris and persuaded her to perform with him. However her marriage to famed physicist Imre Patai and return to Budapest prevented this concert. Resuming her career with rave reviews, she was urged by her husband to enter the International Chopin Contest in Warsaw where to her amazement she was a prize winner.
Living in Holland when it was invaded by the Nazis she and her husband escaped to neutral Hungary and she resumed her career. Subsequently she became a member of the underground resistance. When the Nazis arrived in Budapest she posed as a prostitute, had many dangerous escapes, and was nearly killed in the bombings.
In 1946 at age 37 she moved to Sweden from which she and her husband immigrated to the USA in 1947. She continued her career to more rave reviews. In 1949 her husband died and she turned down a contract to tour the country, preferring only to play when she felt like it. In 1953 she made the first
of many appearances with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The same year she played for the first of many times at the Bethlehem Bach Festival and joined the faculty of Peabody where she remained until becoming Professor of Music at Bryn Mawr College in 1957. From this time on she played mainly locally, especially in hospitals and nursing homes. After becoming Professor Emeritus in 1974 she gave only occasional concerts in her home and at Cabrini College near her rural home in Radnor PA.
After listening to one of the numerous Bach records she had made in the fifties I tracked her down in 1989 and persuaded her to move to Baltimore where she would have adequate medical care and resume old friendships and end her isolation. She now lives in the Beethoven Apartments with her two pianos
surrounded by her large library in five languages. Plans to release her many- LPs as CDs are in progress.
Today she makes her first public performance in nearly fifteen years.@@@@@@
Joseph Stephens 1985

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