Word: villach
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Brabeck was born in Villach, Austria, six months before the end of World War II. His mother Edeltraud Brabeck recalls rushing with her infant son to an air-raid shelter to avoid Allied bombs. In the tough economic times after the war's end, the surrounding Alps became Brabeck's playground. By age 10, he was climbing with ropes. As a teenager, he took off for hiking trips with his friend Hans Thomassen, with little more than a tarp and his mother's sandwiches. She recalls that "he was always an adventurer, just like his father"--a salesman...
Died. Wilhelm Backhaus, 85, German patriarch of concert pianists and the century's foremost interpreter of Beethoven; of a heart attack; in Villach, Austria. When Backhaus was eight, the noted pianist-composer Arthur Nikisch wrote to him that "whoever plays the great Bach so well when so young will surely make his way later on." The assessment was overly modest. In a career spanning three generations, Backhaus won acclaim for his masterful interpretations of virtually all the great composers. But his deepest dedication was to Beethoven, whose sonatas he played with great clarity of style and breadth of emotion...
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