Anton Kuerti

Anton Kuerti

Anton (Emil) Kuerti, OC (born July 21, 1938, in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian-born Canadian pianist, music teacher, composer, and conductor. Since his performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Boston Pops Orchestra at age 11, he has developed international recognition as a solo pianist, particularly focusing on the works of Beethoven. Kuerti studied music at the Longy School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute. His teachers included Arthur Loesser, Rudolf Serkin and Mieczysław Horszowski. He also studied at the age of 16 at The Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore, with Henry Cowell of whom he has written; see "Henry Cowell: Enfant Terrible of American Music," Queen's Quarterly 102/3 (Fall 1995) 627-632.

Even with international recognition as a solo performer, Kuerti has also been generous in sharing his talents within Canada. He has performed in 150 communities throughout Canada and with every professional orchestra. He has received numerous honourary doctorates. In 1980, he founded the Festival of the Sound, a classical music festival in Parry Sound, Ontario.

Kuerti is one of today’s most recorded artists. His recordings include all the Beethoven concertos and sonatas, the Schubert sonatas, the Brahms concertos, and works by many other composers. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2007 he was appointed to the special one-year Schulich Professorship Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal as visiting professor. In 2008 he was awarded the Canadian Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.

Kuerti is also the artistic director Mooredale Concerts, and of the Mooredale Youth Orchestras, a small Toronto-based set of three orchestras for children and teen-agers founded by his late wife, cellist Kristine Bogyo.

In 2002, Kuerty directed the The Czerny Music Festival in Edmonton, to draw attention to the work of Austrian composer Carl Czerny (1791-1857). The festival featured symphonies, masses, string quartets and quintets, works for piano and strings, songs and miscellaneous chamber works, composed by Czerny.

His son Julian Kuerti is the assistant conductor to the Boston Symphony.