Dina Avrech

Dina Avrech was born in Tel Aviv in 1925. Her musical talent was discovered when she was a young girl, when the guest-conductor of the IPO (than Palestine Philharmonic), Italian conductor Bernardino Molinari, heard her play and invited her to play under his direction. Her premiere performance as soloist took place at the “Ohel” Auditorium in Tel Aviv, playing the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Philharmonic. By the age of six, despite not yet knowing how to read music, she had already composed eleven short pieces for piano.

Avrech studied music under Rivka Shertok-Hoz, sister of foreign minister and Prime Minister Moshe Sharett and wife of Dov Hoz. 

She continued her studies with the first musical director of the Philharmonic, Prof. Leo Kestenberg, sub-minister of music in pre-Nazi Germany, after which she left to complete her studies at the national musical academy in Vienna. On completion of her studies with distinction, the great Italian pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli took her on as a private pupil. She remained in Bolzano for three years as his student. During her studies, she toured the country at the invitation of the Philharmonic, and performed as soloist under the batons of well-known conductors, among them Chilividake.

In later years Dina Avrech continued to perform as soloist with the Philharmonic and with the orchestra of the Broadcasting Authority, as well as in recitals in Israel and Europe. In between these commitments, she applied to the Foreign Ministry and was sent, on their behalf, on a tour of Africa (the Ivory Coast, Liberia). There she was crowned, in a special ceremony, as “knight of the Liberian nation.”

– Translated from a piece in “Haaretz”