GABRIEL BANAT

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He was born on September 23, 1926 in Timisoara, in a Jewish family. His father, Dr. Alexandru Hirsch, was a doctor. Between 1932 and 1940 he attended the Israeli elementary school and the first high school classes at the Israelite High School in Timisoara.

In 1932 he took violin lessons with Prof. Rudolf Bayer, then continued with Prof. Josef Brandeisz (1896-1978), a famous pedagogue from Timisoara who had at that time three special students who had an international career: Johanna Martzy, Stefan Romascanu and Gabriel Hirsch (Gabriel Banat).

On May 2, 1936, the concert of Béla Bartók (piano) and Eduard Zathureczky (violin) took place in Timişoara. After the concert, the soloists were invited to the house of Dr. Alexandru Hirsch. Eduard Zathureczky, a professor at the Budapest Academy of Music, was so enthusiastic about the 10-year-old boy's musicality that he took him as a student. Gabi Hirsch became the youngest student of the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest in 1937. He debuted as a soloist in the Jenö Hubay Hall in 1938. At the age of 14 he became the soloist of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and won the famous Hubay Prize. In 1940 he had great success with a violin recital in the concert hall of Professor Leo Freund in Timisoara. He returned to Timişoara to finish his private studies as a student of the Constantin Diaconovici Loga High School.

In 1942, during the anti-Semitic measures, his father fled from Timişoara to Budapest, where, in 1943, Dr. Alexandru Hirsch was denounced and arrested. At the age of 17, in 1943, before going underground due to Nazi persecution, Gabriel Hirsch Banat graduated by singing the exam program in secret, with the Academy jury hiding in the darkroom. On April 1, 1944, deportations from Budapest began. The Hirsch family, with forged documents, managed to escape and hide in the Bácska region, until they were able to return to Timişoara in October 1944.

Gabriel Banat became George Enescu's student. On June 8, 1946, the young violinist gave a farewell concert in Timisoara in the great hall of the School of Music. A few days earlier, he also gave a concert in the Synagogue in the Citadel, for which the first rabbi Dr. Miaximilian Drechsler thanked him in a letter.

He settled permanently in New York in 1946, where he also worked with the violinist Nathan Milstein. His debut was with the New York Little Symphony in Times Hall. In 1949 he performed with George Enescu in the Town Hall in New York.

He performs with the Paris Orchestra, with the London Philharmonic at the Festival Hall, has recitals in the most prestigious concert halls around the world. He has been a professor and associate professor at Smith College, Hart College of Music, and New York University; led master classes at Toho and Tokyo Geidai in Japan. In 1961-1962 he performed with Pablo Casals at the Marlboro Festival. He has been a member of various chamber music groups, such as Albeneri and New Amsterdam Trio, Galimir Quartet, Rococo Ensemble. Together with his wife Diana, on viola, and Susan and Gerald Kagan, he formed the Banat-Kagan piano quartet. He has been a member of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra since 1970.

In the period 1960-1970 he recorded records for the record companies Vox, Turnabout, CRI and performed in the first audition works by contemporary composers dedicated to him personally.

Banat has been intensively involved in musicology research. He published "Masters of the Violin", 1980, a six-volume collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century violin composers. In 1985 he published in facsimile the original manuscripts of Mozart's five violin concertos, considered lost during World War II. Banat played the violin throughout the cycle during a tour in Japan. In 2006 he published the biography of an eighteenth-century violinist and composer: „The Chevalier by Saint-Georges, Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow".

He retired from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1993 and from public concerts in 1995. From 2007-2008 he taught the master class at the Conservatory of Music in Gerona, Spain.

In 2008, after an absence of 62 years, Gabriel Banat returned to Timişoara, where he was awarded the diploma of Honorary Citizen of the city. He sang, with violinist Gabriel Popa, The Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra in D minor by J.S. Bach in the Capitol Hall of the Timişoara Philharmonic, his last public performance.

Gabriel Banat has played two Stradivarius violins: from 1682 ("ex-Hill", now called "Banat") and "Pingrillé" from 1713.

Sources

• Website of violinist Gabriel Banat
  http://gabrielbanat.com/
• Dr. Franz Metz, Von Temeswar nach New York und nach 62 Jahren zurück
• Der Temeswarer Geiger Gabriel Banat an den Stätten seiner Kindheit
  http://www.edition-musik-suedost.de/html/gabriel_banat.html
• Gabriel Banat in the online magazine of Timisoara Jews
  http://www.bjt2006.org/gbanat.html
• Victor Neumann şi Franz Metz, Local and universal or about the spirit of Timisoara. Gabriel Banat - a musician of the world http://www.vestul.ro/stiri/452/local-si-universal-sau-despre-spiritul-timisoarei.htm?action=print
• Franz Metz. Timisoara - New York and return, after 62 years. Gabriel Banat - Violinist
  https://www.romania-muzical.ro/info/evenimente/arhiva/2008/eveniment20080513-gabrielbanat.html