Maryla Jonas

Maryla Jonas was a Polish pianist of Jewish origin and a prizewinner of the 2nd International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. She was born in Warsaw and grew up in a large Polish Jewish family, the daughter of Doctor Stanislaw Jonas and Regina Barska. She began studying piano in childhood, first with Wlodzimierz Oberfeld, and at the age of eight made her public debut with an orchestra conducted by Emil Mlynarski, after which she was recognized as a child prodigy. In 1922, at the age of eleven, she was admitted to the Warsaw Conservatory, where she studied in the class of Jozef Turczynski, and at twelve she appeared at a symphonic morning concert of the Warsaw Philharmonic.

During her years in Poland, Jonas took part in several piano competitions, including the first two Chopin competitions in Warsaw. While preparing for the competition, she traveled to Morges for piano consultations with Ignacy Jan Paderewski and then to Vienna to work with Emil von Sauer. In 1927 she was among the youngest participants in the 1st International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition, though she was eliminated after the preliminary round. Five years later, in 1932, she became a prizewinner at the 2nd Chopin Competition. She also appeared at the International Piano Competition in Vienna in 1933, where she received an honorary diploma with a silver medal, and at the Eugene Ysaye Competition in Brussels in 1938.

Jonas concertized widely before the Second World War, appearing in many European countries, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden. In 1927 and 1928 she performed at Mozart festivals in Bayreuth and Salzburg. Before the war she frequently gave concerts in Poland, including at the Warsaw Philharmonic, where she performed, among other works, Henryk Melcer-Szczawinski's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor and Alfredo Casella's Partita for piano and orchestra. She was also heard on Polish Radio in broadcasts of Chopin concerts. At that time she entered her first marriage, to a well-known Polish criminologist.

In the first months of the Second World War, Jonas lost her parents, her husband, and two brothers. She was soon arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned. After seven months in custody, a German officer who had heard her play at a concert secured her release and advised her to go to the Brazilian embassy in Berlin. She made the journey on foot over the course of several weeks, and after embassy staff prepared false documents for her, she went through Lisbon and reached Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in 1940.

Exhausted physically and mentally after her escape, Jonas underwent treatment in a sanatorium. A decisive turning point came in 1940 when she met Arthur Rubinstein, who had arrived for a series of recitals and helped her return to active artistic life. On 30 June 1940 she gave her first concert after arriving in South America, in Rio de Janeiro. In the following years she performed many times in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, as well as in other Latin American countries.

She then turned to the United States. On 25 February 1946 she appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York in her first organized concert after the war. Although the audience was small, her talent was recognized by music critics and journalists, including Jerome D. Bohm of The Herald Tribune, who wrote a favorable review. A few weeks later, on 30 March, another Carnegie Hall concert brought her major artistic and public success. On 10 October 1946 she performed with the New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodzinski, and she subsequently appeared in other American concert venues, including in Chicago, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Dallas, as well as in Canada. In 1946 she married for a second time, to the endocrinologist Ernest G. Abraham.

In 1951 Jonas fainted during one of her concerts, and from then on she greatly reduced the pace of her artistic life. Examinations carried out in 1952 showed that the cause was a rare blood disease. Thereafter she toured only occasionally and gave a limited number of concerts. On 1 December 1956 she gave what proved to be her last public concert at Carnegie Hall in New York, with a program of works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Frédéric Chopin; because of her health, however, she omitted some planned pieces and played Chopin's Polonaise in F-sharp minor, Op. 44 only in part before breaking off the performance.

Maryla Jonas died in New York on 3 July 1959 after a long, progressive, and debilitating illness. Her repertoire included works by Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Henryk Melcer-Szczawinski, George Frideric Handel, and Franz Schubert. She also recorded several albums for Columbia Records.

Connections

This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.