A prodigious talent, the young cellist was rewarded with a Deutsche Grammophon contract and toured all over Europe. Why has the ‘German Du Pré’ been forgotten today? A new documentary explores her life and legacy
Do we hear music differently if there’s tragedy in the life story of its composer or performer? And if we do, are we bestowing that music with a melancholy, or insight, and sometimes even a greatness, that isn’t there?
These are some of the thoughts I had while researching the little-known German cellist Anja Thauer for a BBC Radio 3 documentary, The Myth and Mystery of Anja Thauer. She was a child prodigy who went to the Paris Conservatoire in 1960 aged 15, won the Grand Prix, and immediately started touring internationally. Fame seemed inevitable. Deutsche Grammophon signed her, only to sideline her in favour of the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who came to the label in 1968 and was launched with the same piece that Thauer had just recorded and released – the Dvořák Cello Concerto. It was to be her last album, although she was contracted to release two more, and she continued to tour right up to her suicide in 1973.