A great pianist’s house is falling to pieces
mainGina Bachauer died in August 1976, on her way to give a concert with Antal Dorati beneath the Acropolis in Athens.
She left her house in the suburb of Halandri to the Athens Conservatory, to be developed as an education centre for young Greek musicians.
Here is what has become of it.
A month after Gina Bachauer’s death, the Athens Conservatory moved to a new building in one of the most expensive blocks of Athens. The land and building were provided by the government, partly materializing a plan that went back to the 1950s. Construction of that building is still incomplete.
http://www.ekathimerini.com/207659/article/ekathimerini/life/athens-conservatory-a-well-kept-urban-secret
this film doesn’t exactly shed a lot of light on it either
A rainy Sunday here and now a blog post to match — depressing and without point or reason to hope. How very helpful.
How sad if this is the case………….! Gina was the most generous person imaginable and her desire to help young artists (as I know only too well – having her to thank for almost my entire musical eduction and much more!!) was always there, in the forefront of her thoughts! She would be devastated to know of this neglect! How sad, also, to hear that building of the Athens Conservatory is still incomplete……….
No one, perhaps, is better placed to attest to this than Ms. Fisher, one of England’s finest and inexplicably unsung pianists. I’m sure today, in current usage, Gina would be called your ‘mentor’, and how fortunate you were.
It rather infuriates me that no trouble was taken to investigate or consider the possible fate of the house. One thought does occur. Gina fed all the area’s stray cats, and neighbours continued this after her very sad death. Do they still? I wonder. One possibility would please Gina, I think — to turn the property into a shelter for stray animals. If no link can be maintained with her glorious musicianship, it can with something else that lay close to her huge heart.
The clip needs some scary music.
and another clip for the house… Music is one of the most successful Greek songs of the 20s/30s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZKud2G3n7Y
… and what she would have thought if she had heard the new government announcing that “the arrogance of the western classical music is over”…
We come into this world with nothing and we leave with nothing, that’s the stark reality of life, so best to make the most of it whilst we’re here. Her playing will be remembered whatever about the house falling down and the sadness of it all as being someone’s home at one point. But unless people were going to club together, which no doubt they wouldn’t, then it was inevitable. Suddenly what was a home is then a house and then it’s uncared for.