V Devetzi – M Rostropovich Beethoven, 12 Variations from Haendel’s Judas Maccabaeus

VASSO DEVETZI
(1925-1987)

The Greek pianist Vasso Devetzi was born in Thessaloniki on September 9, 1925 and she had her first experience of music at an early age. She studied at the famous State Conservatory of Thessaloniki with the Belgian professor of piano Théo Kaufmann and other important music teachers and then with the great Viennese soloists Wolfram Zeller and Margarete Gelbard.
In 1949 she left for Paris, which became her home for the next 40 years, and studied with the distinguished teacher Μarguerite Long, a student of Ravel himself. Long immediately recognized Devetzi’s musical talent and promoted her career. In November 1950 the young Greek pianist made her triumphant debut at the Salle Gaveau with Albert Wolff and the Pasdeloup Orchestra performing Schumann’s Concerto for Piano.
Many tours were to follow, first in France, Italy, England, the Netherlands and the former Yugoslavia and later all around Europe, the USA and particularly the countries of the former Soviet Union. She also made frequent appearances in Greece invited by the Athens Festival at the Herod Atticus Theater.
In 1957 she began an association of profound respect and friendship with the exceptional Russian musicians David Oistrach (violin) and Slava Rostropovitch (cello) and with the conductors Evgeny Mravinsky, Rudolf Barshai and Gennady Rozhdestvensky. She toured with them frequently and made many recordings, with works of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, as well as the contemporary composers Henri Sauguet and Revol Bunin. She also made a recording of the Ballade opus 19 by Gabriel Fauré with Serge Baudo in Paris. In 1963 and in 1969 she was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque, and her excellent recording with M. Rostropovitch (Variations for Cello and Piano by Beethoven and the Sonata opus 6 by R. Strauss) won her the American Grammy Award in 1975.
Her personal contribution in engaging great artists to appear at the Athens Festival was decisive and she was awarded the Greek Order of Beneficence and the French distinction “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” for services rendered in international cultural exchanges.
In 1967 she became closely associated with the great Greek soprano Maria Callas, who also resided in Paris. In 1970 Devetzi traveled with Callas to Moscow for the International Tchaikovsky Competition and on February 27, 1974, they appeared together at a recital in Boston. They often spent vacations together and shared mutual feelings of esteem and friendship. Following the diva’s sudden death, Vasso Devetzi dedicated herself to the establishment of the Maria Callas International Foundation in collaboration with renowned personalities from all around the world and in agreement with Callas’s mother, Litsa Kalogeropoulou.
When the latter died, her heirs fought bitterly, for their own personal benefit, against the Foundation and its aims, which were to support and promote Maria Callas’s legacy and to provide scholarships for young lyric artists (with international events, such as that in 1983 at four great opera houses connected by satellite and in 1986 at the Alte Oper Frankfurt with the presentation of the Maria Callas Awards). Under the stress of this conflict and the slander leveled against her, Vasso Devetzi died suddenly in Paris on November 1, 1987 at the age of 62.