PIANO 1952 : Second Prize
Swiss pianist Karl Engel studied with Baumgartner at the Basle Conservatory and with Cortot at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. After winning prizes at the Queen Elisabeth (1952) and Busoni (1953) competitions he began an international career, specializing in the sonatas and concertos of Mozart, the Beethoven sonatas and the works of Schubert and Schumann. He also played chamber music with, among others, Pablo Casals, and was a discerning accompanist in Lieder, notably with Hermann Prey and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. He made many recordings, including Mozart concertos, Schubert and Brahms Lieder and the complete piano works of Schumann. Karl Engel was a professor at the Hanover Hochschule für Musik from 1955 to 1986 and subsequently taught at the Berne Conservatory.