T “Now I want to spend more time in supporting the careers of young artists. I want to help them with their career development and encourage them to be creative and to perform — help them find ways to make it happen,” she says. he way to Wilmington for Elizabeth Loparits was a longer one. The classical pianist, professor of music and department accompanist at UNCW, grew up in a small village south of Budapest, Hungary, on the banks of the Danube River. “Nobody in my family is a musician,” she says, “so I didn’t know anything about music until one day when I heard a young girl play Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise.’ I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.” It brought tears to her eyes, she recalls. “I went home and told my mother that I really wanted to learn to play the piano. I was nine at the time. She searched in the area, but there was no one who could teach me.” Loparits’ dream seemed impossible until an unexpected crisis caused the family to move to the village where her grandparents lived. “That town had a music school,” she explains, “a state music school — not a private one — run by the communist government. By that time I was twelve and if you were over ten years old that par-ticular school would not take you as a piano or violin student; the demand was too high and the competition too great. But my grandfather went day after day to the music school and begged them to accept me. He had donated a lot of money to the school in the past, and he felt it would have some influence. I actually pleaded with him not to go back. I was embarrassed for him, but he refused to give up. Finally it Sea inSpireD giFtS anD DecOr 46 WBM february 2014 Elizabeth Loparits performs in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Beckwith Recital Hall in 2012. 4107 Oleander Drive 910.799.4216 Monday-Friday: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Saturday: 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. UNCW/HAYLEY CATES
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