Draga Matković

Draga Matković (also known as Draga Matković-von Auerhann; 4 November 1907 – 29 July 2013) was a contemporary German classical pianist of Croatian origin.

Life

Matković was born in Zagreb, where she received her first piano lessons at the age of three from her strict adoptive mother, Sidonie Linke (also a pianist) in Aussig (Bohemia) and gave her first public concert in Terezín, then Theresienstadt. With special permission from the government, she was admitted at age 15 to the German Music Academy of Prague and qualified aged 19 with the title of "professor of piano". She also took violin and singing lessons.

In 1926, she first toured as a piano soloist to Poland, and later to other 16 European countries. After her marriage to the violinist Arthur Arnold (from 1937 to 1942), she moved to Teplice (formally Teplitz-Schönau) in Bohemia where she was very successful as a chamber musician and with orchestral concerts.

Just after the war began, her conductor was imprisoned because Matković performed a concerto by Felix Mendelssohn, whose music was prohibited as non-Aryan.