Pianist and teacher; born 4 June 1902 in Klagenfurt, died 1987 in London.
Biography
Ferdinand Rauter studied music and chemistry in Dresden from 1920.
In 1929 he formed a partnership with the Danish singer Engel Lund, who had grown up in Iceland and had a unique talent to perform folk songs from all over the world in their original languages. Rauter wrote the accompaniments for these, and they performed them in hundreds of concerts in Britain and on several tours of Europe and the United States before and after the war.
Rauter came to live in Britain in 1929. He was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man in 1940 and co-founded the Refugee Musicians Committee (1941), the Austrian Musicians Group and the Anglo-Austrian Music Society.
Ferdinand Rauter gave frequent concerts at the National Gallery during the war and worked as music therapist in Scotland 1945-46. He made several recordings of songs with Engel Lund for BBC and for EMI. He was also a world expert on mushrooms and an excellent cook.
Source: Andrea Rauter interview
Links and Sources
Find out more about the history of the Anglo Austrian Music Society
Elsewhere in this resource
Photo: Ferdinand Rauter by Peter Rauter, reproduced with kind permission from Andrea Rauter
