Anton Kuerti - Biography

Anton (Emil) Kuerti, OC (born July 21, 1938, in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian-born Canadian pianist, music teacher, composer, and conductor. Since his performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Boston Pops Orchestra at age 11, he has developed international recognition as a solo pianist, particularly focusing on the works of Beethoven. Kuerti studied music at the Longy School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute. His teachers included Arthur Loesser, Rudolf Serkin and Mieczysław Horszowski. He also studied at the age of 16 at The Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore, with Henry Cowell of whom he has written; see "Henry Cowell: Enfant Terrible of American Music," Queen's Quarterly 102/3 (Fall 1995) 627-632.

Even with international recognition as a solo performer, Kuerti has also been generous in sharing his talents within Canada. He has performed in 150 communities throughout Canada and with every professional orchestra. He has received numerous honourary doctorates. In 1980, he founded the Festival of the Sound, a classical music festival in Parry Sound, Ontario.

Kuerti is one of today’s most recorded artists. His recordings include all the Beethoven concertos and sonatas, the Schubert sonatas, the Brahms concertos, and works by many other composers. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2007 he was appointed to the special one-year Schulich Professorship Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal as visiting professor. In 2008 he was awarded the Canadian Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.

Kuerti is also the artistic director Mooredale Concerts, and of the Mooredale Youth Orchestras, a small Toronto-based set of three orchestras for children and teen-agers founded by his late wife, cellist Kristine Bogyo.

His son Julian Kuerti is the assistant conductor to the Boston Symphony.

Political views

A longtime peace activist, Kuerti was also the New Democratic Party candidate in Don Valley North in the 1988 federal election. He signed a tax resistance vow in 1966 to protest the Vietnam War.

Kuerti strongly criticized Israel's invasion of Gaza in early 2009. He was quoted as saying, "The unbelievable war crimes that Israel is committing in Gaza ... it makes me ashamed to be a Jew. The servile way in which Canada is supporting the U.S. position - basically it's all Hamas's fault because of missiles that they throw over in desperation - I think this reluctance of Canada to use its influence makes me ashamed to be Canadian."

• Kuerti, Anton - The Canadian Encyclopedia

External links

• Anton Kuerti bio
• Watch the short documentary Anton & the Piano, National Film Board of Canada (Requires Adobe Flash)