Catherine Kautsky

Catherine Kautsky was born in Cambridge, MA, grew up in St. Louis, went to school in Boston and New York, and is now head of the Keyboard Dept. at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI. She’s an active performing pianist who’s been lauded by the New York Times as “a pianist who can play Mozart and Schubert as though their sentiments and habits of speech coincided exactly with hers …” Performance is still her main professional activity, and she has performed on five continents, with recitals across Europe, in South Africa, China, Korea, Australia and Brazil. She’s also a devoted teacher, and in 2016 she was honored with the Lawrence Excellence in Teaching Award, Her recently issued Centaur recording of the Debussy Preludes, was said to “bring out all the power, majesty, and mystery of Debussy’s conception,“ and her previous recording of music for piano and narrator, with Ms. Kautsky playing both roles, brought together her love for both words and music. Research for her book on Debussy has been a further extension of that love, for Debussy wrote beautifully himself and, even in his piano music, couldn’t resist referring to texts. The book has provided an excuse to read and re-read Proust, Poe, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, J.M. Barrie, Hans Christian Andersen, and many, many others.

It has further allowed Ms. Kautsky to indulge her love for Paris and to bring together an abiding interest in both politics and music. She is, in fact, an anomaly in her family – everyone else is a social scientist, and she’s been unable to escape learning! Delighted though she is to explore Debussy, Ms. Kautsky’s parents hail from Vienna, and that is the music she continues to play most often. Her most recent recording was of the complete Brahms Sonatas for Violin and Piano and upcoming performances include Schubert’s Winterreise, the Mozart Sonata in A Minor, and Brahms Piano Quartet in A Major.

When she isn’t practicing or writing or teaching, Ms. Kautsky is trying to reach her grown kids on the phone or baking bread or reading novels. She travels a great deal and is currently looking forward to a week long residency in Hong Kong.

Personal webpage: http://faculty.lawrence.edu/kautskyc/