Nora Grumlíková

As a young child, she lived with her parents in Alexandria for several years. After returning to her homeland, she attended school in Kroměříž and Prostějov. Finally, she moved with her parents to Strakonice, where she started learning to play the violin at the Klimeš school from the age of nine. Already at the age of ten, she played her first solo public concert (30 June 1940), where she demonstrated her talent on compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Zdenek Fibich and Bohuslav Martinů . Since then, she began commuting to Prague to study the violin with Jindřich Feld , whose class she also entered the master school of the Prague Conservatorywhile simultaneously studying at the Strakonice real gymnasium. She graduated from the Master’s School with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (1948). The following year she graduated from grammar school and was soon accepted to the AMU to study the violin with Jaroslav Pekelský (1949-53 ). After four years, she graduated with a concert of compositions by Bach, Beethoven and Prokofiev and Suk’s Fantasia accompanied by an orchestra. At AMUhowever, she stayed on for another three years (1953–56) to complete her postgraduate studies. During this time, she participated in international competitions (Paris 1955, Prague 1956). She then improved her musical skills by studying with Carl van Neste at the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels (1956–59), where she became a laureate and received a diploma in virtuosity. In 1959, she won second place in the Darche music competition in Brussels. Her stay in Brussels allowed her to give concerts in several Belgian cities, and she also achieved success in Paris, Poland and Romania. At the beginning of the sixties, she established a permanent collaboration with the pianist Jaroslav Kolář , with whom she studied many chamber and concert pieces. She also devoted herself to teaching activities: from 1960 she taught violin at the Prague Conservatory ; since 1967 she worked as a teacher atAMU , where she became a professor in 1990. She brought up a number of excellent pupils (for example Jiří Klika , Čeněk Pavlík , Ivan Ženatý or Gabriela Demeterová ), who greatly appreciated her for her mastery of the violin as well as her personality and approach to learning. Towards the end of her life, she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and no longer played.

Source: Centrum hudební lexikografie