Draga Matković
Draga Matković was a contemporary German classical pianist of Croatian descent.
Life and work
Matković was born in Zagreb, where she received her first piano lessons at the age of three from her strict adoptive mother, Sidonie Linke in Aussig and gave her first public concert in Terezín, then Theresienstadt. Later, at the age of 15, her adoptive father obtained a special permit from the government that enabled her to be admitted at age 15 to the German Music Academy of Prague and qualified aged 19 with the title of "professor of piano". She also took violin and singing lessons. In 1926, she first toured as a piano soloist to Poland, and later to other 16 European countries. After her marriage to the violinist Arthur Arnold, she moved to Teplice in Bohemia where she was very successful as a chamber musician and with orchestral concerts.Just after the war began, her conductor was imprisoned because Matković performed a concerto by Felix Mendelssohn, whose music was prohibited as non-Aryan. In 1945, following her displacement from the Sudetenland, Matković found a new home in Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria, where she spent the rest of her life, dying in 2013. She proved her talent not only on the piano but as well occasionally on saxophone, as a conductor, and composer of several music pieces and an operetta ; this libretto was lost during the war. Her favourite composers are Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Liszt, Raff, Grieg and all Nordic and Slavic composers. She practised as a music teacher up to the age of 95 mainly in the area of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. She still performed classical piano music to an incredibly high level, as can be heard on the music samples attached. Her favourite instrument was a Blüthner piano. Matković was due to be enrolled in the Guinness World Records list as the oldest living and still practising concert pianist in the world. She gave a public piano performance on her 100th birthday, 4 November 2007, in Bayerisch Gmain near Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria. She played the "Polka de la Reine" by Joachim Raff, the Impromptu, Op. 28 by Hugo Reinhold, and pieces by Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn.