Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté

Who was Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté?

Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté was a Russian-born Canadian composer and virtuoso pianist and violinist.

Born in Moscow as Sofia Fridman-Kochevskaya, Eckhardt-Gramatté studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, where her teachers included Alfred Brun and Guillaume Rémy for violin, S. Chenée for piano, and Vincent d'Indy and Camille Chevillard for composition. She also embarked on several concert tours of Western Europe, on which she performed her own works. In 1920, she married the painter Walter Gramatté in Berlin. She toured with Edwin Fischer in Germany in 1925.

Following her husband's death in 1929, she pursued further lessons in composition with Max Trapp in Berlin.

In 1934, she married the journalist and art historian Ferdinand Eckhardt and together they moved to Vienna. She dedicated herself exclusively to composition after 1935. The couple relocated again to Winnipeg, Canada in 1953. In Winnipeg she taught several violin students out of a private studio, including violinist Gwen Thompson.

Eckhardt-Gramatté died in Stuttgart as a result of an accident. Her legacy is preserved through the work of the Eckhardt-Grammaté Foundation.