Friedrich Gulda
Born in Vienna in 1930, Friedrich Gulda started piano lessons at the age of seven. At 12 he enrolled in the Vienna Music Academy, and four years later he received first prize in the Geneva International Music Festival. In 1949 Gulda toured Europe and South America, earning international acclaim for his treatments of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, and the following year he made a successful debut at Carnegie Hall. He also began recording for Decca around this time. Gulda was often grouped with Jörg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda; all were young Viennese pianists oriented toward the heart of the city's musical tradition.
Gulda's involvement with jazz began after a 1951 encounter with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie following a performance with the Chicago Symphony. Five years later, Gulda played his first American jazz concert at New York's Birdland club, followed by a performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. After this, Gulda formed the Eurojazz Orchestra, a jazz combo and big band that drew from both jazz and classical compositions. In 1966, ten years after his Birdland appearance, Gulda organized a modern jazz competition in his native city. He was awarded the Vienna Academy's Beethoven Ring in 1970, but later returned it to protest what he regarded as a constricting educational system. A lone wolf to the end, Gulda developed a core of admirers but didn't have much interaction with adherents of the then-flourishing third stream trend of fusing classical and jazz.
Over time, as he began to pursue parallel careers and even combine classical and jazz elements within a single concert, there developed a perception of Gulda as an eccentric. He gained the dubious moniker of "terrorist pianist." This reputation intensified when the pianist abruptly called off major performances more than once. One such incident occurred in 1988, as organizers of a Salzburg music festival objected to Gulda's inclusion of jazz musician Joe Zawinul on the program; Gulda and Zawinul would collaborate often in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After faking his own death in 1999 and staging a party in honor of his own resurrection, Gulda experienced the real thing on January 27, 2000, after a heart attack in Vienna. Although he continued to perform classical music for his entire life, the bulk of Gulda's classical recordings date from the 1950s through the 1970s. He has been honored with inclusion in EMI's Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century series.
© TiVo
Similar artists
-
Gulda Plays Bach
Classical - Released by Archiv Produktion on 6 Oct 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gulda, Friedrich: The Early Recordings (1950, 1953, 1959) (Ludwig van Beethoven - Claude Debussy - Maurice Ravel)
Classical - Released by Audite on 28 Aug 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Strauss: Piano Concertos (Live)
Friedrich Gulda, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, Joseph Keilberth, Hans Müller-Kray, Hans Rosbaud
Classical - Released by SWR Classic on 14 Feb 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Friedrich Gulda Plays Chopin
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op.111 / Gulda: Wintermeditation
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 Jan 1984
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gulda Plays Gulda & Corea
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 Dec 1984
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gulda plays Mozart
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 23 Jan 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 21
Friedrich Gulda, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra, Claudio Abbado
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 1975
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Fata Morgana - Live at the Domicile
Pop - Released by MPS on 1 Apr 1971
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Chick Corea & Friedrich Gulda: The Meeting
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 Jan 1983
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Message from G (Live)
Classical - Released by MPS Classical on 1 Jan 1979
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Das wohltemperierte Klavier (Gesamtausgabe BWV 846-869, 870-893)
Classical - Released by MPS Classical on 1 Jan 1978
24-Bit 88.2 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 25 & 27
Friedrich Gulda, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra, Claudio Abbado
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on 1 Jan 1976
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gulda: Works (Live)
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, Südfunk Tanzorchester, Friedrich Gulda
Classical - Released by SWR Classic on 8 Jan 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach - Gulda - Clavichord (The Mono Tapes)
Classical - Released by Berlin Classics on 1 Jun 2018
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1-5
Friedrich Gulda, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra, Horst Stein
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 22 Sep 1971
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms: Symphony No. 1 - Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 9
Friedrich Gulda, Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Karl Böhm
Classical - Released by Orfeo on 1 Jan 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Art of Friedrich Gulda
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 8 Jul 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Legendary Pianists - Famous Piano Concertos
Classical - Released by SWR Classic on 10 Mar 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
A Piano Story - Friedrich Gulda
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 19 May 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Friedrich Gulda plays Schumann
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 24 Oct 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo