Maria Lidka
THE VIOLINIST Maria Lidka, who has died just five months short of her centenary, fled Nazi Germany for Britain in 1934 following the escape of her teacher Max Rostal, and immediately immersed herself into London’s musical life. She particularly championed new music in the post-war era, naming Michael Tippett, Richard Rodney Bennett and Peter Racine Fricker among the composers who wrote for her. A perfect sight-reader, unfazed by even the most difficult 12-tone music, she once made Tippett re-write a chunk of his composition because she considered it unplayable.
Born Marianne Louise Liedtke, the youngest daughter of a Jewish lawyer in the Berlin appeal court, her family were cultured and sophisticated. One of her sisters became a photographer, and another, an actress who married into Westphalian nobility.
With a subscription bought by her father to see the Berlin Philharmonic under Willhelm Fuetrwangler, she diarised every concert she had seen, evaluating standards, endurance and technique. Her musical life was filled at the time with performances by Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber, Artur, Schnabel, Vladimir Horowitz and Artur Rubinstein.
But it all changed in 1933 when her father lost his job and died shortly afterwards. In London she supported herself by giving German and violin lessons, and early in the war her life was saved because she broke a curfew imposed on enemy aliens like herself, by staying out late at a chamber concert. She spent the night in a police cell as a result, learning the next morning that her Belsize Park home had been bombed. The arresting officer then proposed to her.
In 1939 her Wigmore Hall debut featured music by Mozart and Franck. Two years later she was asked to replace Marie Hlounova in the Czech Trio with Walter Susskind on the piano and Karel Horitz on the cello. It happened through her meeting with the Czech foreign minister Jan Masaryk. To sound more Czech, she changed her name to Lidka. New radio opportunities opened up with the launch of the then Third Programme, now Radio 3.
Lidka premiered the Sonata in G Sharp written for her by the Germanborn pianist and composer Franz Reizenstein at the Wigmore in 1946 and had a long productive partnership with pianist Margaret Kitchin, with whom she premiered Racine Fricker’s violin sonata, which the composer dedicated to her and which inspired him to write his first violin concerto for her. This won an Arts Council Festival of Britain prize. She performed it at the Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Malcolm Sargent.
She appeared in several Myra Hess lunchtime concerts at the National Gal- lery, often with Benjamin Britten, ande played in the London String Trio with Watson Forbes and Vivian Joseph. Her premiéres included the first European performance of Schoenberg’s Trio.
Lidka’s post-war musical career included performances in Holland France, Switzerland, even Germany and she was a soloist in the Edinburgh festival premiere of Tippett’s Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli in 1953, under the composer’s baton. The performance was hailed by a critic as a “thrilling incandescence of tone” when it was repeated at the Proms. Other composers in her repertoire included Iain Hamilton’s Variations for solo violin in 1953 and John Joubert’s concerto, dedicated to her at the 1954 York festival. Her rendition of Boris Blacher’s solo sonata was hailed by The Times critic as “characterised by seriousness, energy, and warm yet finely drawn tone”. In 1955 she acquired the 1734 Willemotte” Stradivarius.
Maria Lidka married German-Jewish businessman Walter May in 1955 and they had two sons, the philosopher Simon May and the cellist Marius May. But she was widowed in 1963. In order to support her sons she turned to teaching and was a much respected tutor at the Royal College of Music, becoming Professor of Violin from 1968 to 1985. Lidka continued to play in public and was an ardent champion and supporter of her cellist son, Marius, noting his talent from an early age. She is survived by her sons and two grandsons.