André Navarra

André-Nicolas Navarra (13 October 1911 – 31 July 1988) was a French cellist and cello teacher who was born in Biarritz and died in Siena.

Early life He was born into a musical family in Biarritz, his father being a bassist of Italian descent. His parents took steps to prepare him for music before setting him up with an instrument, teaching him scales and solfège before he began studying cello at age seven. Two years later, he was accepted as a student at the Toulouse Conservatory, and graduated in 1924 with first prize at age thirteen. He then continued his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris, learning cello from Jules-Leopold Loeb and chamber music from Charles Tournemire. He graduated two years later at age fifteen, again taking first prize.

After the completion of his lessons at the Conservatoire de Paris, Navarra stopped taking lessons entirely—something very unusual for first-rate soloists. Instead, he worked out his own course of study, and practiced at it. This included transcribing many of the violin technical methods to make up for a lack of decent cello études, including those of Carl Flesch and Otakar Ševčík.

In addition to his position at the Conservatoire de Paris, Navarra taught master classes at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana during summers beginning in 1954, where among his students was a young Saša Večtomov, fall courses in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and accepted an additional professorship at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold in 1958. He also taught in London and Vienna. He died in Siena, Italy.