Myra Hess was born in London in 1890 to a Jewish family. She began piano lessons at five and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. After her debut in 1907, she began touring throughout Britain, The Netherlands, and France, and following her American debut in 1922, Hess became very popular in the U.S. In World War II during Hitler’s incessant bombing of London, Hess organized lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery. Over a period of 6½ years, she produced 1,698 concerts heard by almost one million people, and she personally played in 150 of them, without ever accepting a fee. For boosting morale, King George VI proclaimed her a Dame Commander of the British Empire. Myra Hess was forced to retire in 1961 after suffering a stroke that left her with permanent brain damage. She passed away in 1965 at the age of 75 from a heart attack. Touched by Hess’s playing and humanitarian efforts Arturo Toscanini invited her to perform Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with him and the NBC Symphony.
Isata Kanneh-Mason is a young British pianist who graduated from The London Royal Academy of Music with a Master of Arts in performance and a postgraduate diploma. She has played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Royal Philharmonic, the Paris Mozart Orchestra, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zürich, and the Dallas, Baltimore, San Antonio, and Gothenburg symphonies. In 2021 Isata was named young artist in residence with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. When Isata Kanneh-Mason’s debut album, Romance, was released it hit the UK classical charts at number one.
Clara Schumann was married to the composer Robert Schumann, and is historically recognized as one of the first great female composers and pianists of the 19th century. As an homage to Clara Schumann, Isata Kanneh-Mason recorded an entire disk of Clara Schumann compositions on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of her birth. It includes Clara Schumann’s piano concerto recorded with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Holly Mathiason.
Nadia Reisenberg was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1904. When Nadia was six, her uncle sent the family a piano and Nadia knew immediately she would be at the keyboard for the rest of her life. Her talent demanded that the family move to Saint Petersburg to study at the Conservatory whose Director was the legendary composer Alexander Glazunov, who took a special interest in the gifted girl. Her primary teacher there was Alexander Nikolayev. By 1918 the aftermath of the October Revolution drove the family out of the country with Nadia and her sister Clara, a Theremin Virtuoso, playing their way through Lithuania and into Poland. There in 1921, Nadia played her first orchestral concert: the Rimsky-Korsakov concerto with the Warsaw Symphony under Artur Rodzinski.
Later that year the Reisenbergs were able to get visas to the United States. Nadia began studying with Alexander Lambert and made her American debut in 1922 playing Paderewski’s Polish fantasy with the City Symphony at Carnegie Hall in the presence of the composer. Her reviews were excellent and stated that “among other prominent pianists who have marked her gifts are Rachmaninoff and Hofmann”. Nadia later studied with Joseph Hoffman and eventually became his assistant at the Curtis Institute. In 1939 Reisenberg embarked upon the historic tour de force of playing all of Mozart’s piano Concertos in weekly programs that were nationally broadcast. She was the first pianist to have publicly performed all of the Mozart concertos in sequence. During the 1940s Nadia Reisenberg continued to perform with the New York Philharmonic, throughout the country and abroad. Her solo concerts traversed a variety of repertoire and included many interesting Russian compositions.
By the 1950s Nadia Reisenberg had given up most of her touring and focused more on chamber music and teaching. She taught at the Curtis Institute, Queens College, the Mannes College of Music, the Juilliard School, and privately as well. She was also a frequent juror for the Leventritt competition. Miss Reisenberg was a very patient, encouraging, and dedicated teacher who inspired her students to achieve their best. She passed away at 78 at her home in NY on June 10, 1983. Her special interest in achieving a beautiful singing tone on the piano is very evident in her performance of this well-known Chopin Nocturne in E flat, Op. 9. Nadia Reisenberg often stated how much she appreciated the quality and variety of sounds that Rachmaninoff produced. She said, “ I do not try to copy anyone but I must say that the kinds of sounds that Rachmaninoff achieved are always in my mind.”
Hazel Scott was born in Trinidad in 1920. At age 4 Scott moved to Harlem with her mother, who was a classically trained pianist and music teacher. As an 8-year-old child prodigy, she received a scholarship to study at the Juilliard School. In her teens, she performed with the Count Basie orchestra and on the radio and she was a prominent Jazz singer throughout the 1930s and 40s. By 1945 Scott was earning today’s equivalent of 1.1 million dollars a year. In 1950 she became the first African-American to host her own TV show, the Hazel Scott Show. In 1958, Scott voluntarily appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee. She expressed frustration with the false accusations of entertainers. Her television program was canceled a week later and less than a year after that, Scott suffered a nervous breakdown. Therefore Scott moved to Paris and performed in Europe for 10 years. She was one of the first Afro-Caribbean women to be cast in respectable roles in major Hollywood movies. Scott also refused to perform in segregated venues. In 1981 Hazel Scott died of cancer in Manhattan at the age of 61. She used her She used her status and influence to improve the representation of African Americans in film and to fight against racial injustice. Singer-songwriter Alicia Keys looks up to Scott as her inspiration. In this clip from the 1943 Mae West movie, The Heat’s On, Hazel Scott demonstrated her technical virtuosity by playing one of her famous compositions, “Black & White Are Beautiful”on two pianos simultaneously.
Alicia de Larrocha was born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain in 1923. Both parents and an aunt were pianists so she was surrounded by music in her early life and began piano lessons at the age of three. Alicia gave her first public performance at the age of five at the International Exposition in Barcelona, performed her first full recital at the age of six at the World’s Fair in Seville in 1929, and made her orchestral debut when she was 11. By 1943, her performances were selling out in Spain and in 1947 she began touring internationally. De Larrocha’s first appearances in North America began in 1954 when she toured with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 1969 she played her first of four tours of Southern Africa. After a 76-year widely acclaimed international career, Alicia de Larrocha retired from public performance in 2003 at the age of 80 though she continued to record for several years. She had been in declining health since breaking her hip and died at 86 in Barcelona in 2009.
De Larrocha was considered one of the great piano legends of the 20th century. Members of the Press often referred to her as the “the greatest Spanish Pianist in History”. Though she equally loved the music of the three giants of Spanish Music, Enrique Granados, Isaac Albeniz, and Manuel de Falla, she thought that De Falla was the one who really captured the spirit of Gypsy Music such as in his Dance of Terror from the Ballet “El Amor Brujo”. Less than five feet tall and with small hands for a pianist, she was nonetheless able to tackle all the big concertos. De Larrocha’s repertoire covered a wide range of composers and styles, especially Spanish composers. She is best known for her recordings of the music of de Falla, Granados, and Albeniz, for which she won 4 Grammy awards.
Gina Bachauer was born in Greece in 1913 of Austrian and Italian heritage. She began playing the piano at age 5 and gave her first concert in Athens at age 8. Gina attended the Athens Conservatory and then studied with Alfred Cortot in Paris. In 1933 she won the medal of honor at the Vienna International Competition. In 1935 Gina Bachauer made her professional debut with the Athens Symphony. During World War II she lived in Egypt and played 630 concerts for the Allied forces in the Middle East. Her repertoire ranged from Mozart to Stravinsky. She made her American debut in New York in 1950 and received unanimous critical acclaim. Like many great women pianists before her Gina Bachauer devoted much time passing on her pianistic and musical insights by teaching and encouraging many gifted young pianists. Her master classes at the Jerusalem Center in Israel served as an important vehicle in the development of future artists such as Yefim Bronfman.
Gina Bachauer died in 1976 of a heart attack in Athens. That year the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition was founded in her honor. In 1981 the Greek government honored her by publishing a postage stamp of her image. After a recital in Carnegie Hall Harold Schoenberg declared in the New York Times “Miss Bachauer represents the romantic tradition in piano playing with her enormous technique and her big and penetrating tone. Gina Bachauer continues to be one of the great pianists.” Between 1933 and 1935 she received occasional instruction in France and Switzerland from Rachmaninoff!
Helene Grimaud was born in France in 1969 to Jewish parents. She was accepted into the Paris Conservatory at age 13 and won first prize in piano performance three years later. Grimaud studied with Gyorgy Sandor and Leon Fleischer. In 1987 she made her professional debut in Tokyo. Soon after, the conductor Daniel Barenboim invited her to perform with his Orchestre de Paris launching Grimaud’s career, which includes concerts with most of the world’s major orchestras and celebrated conductors. Her recordings have won several international awards and she has received numerous honor citations from France.
Helene Grimaud has lived in Westchester County, NY since 1997 where she established The Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem while continuing her very active career as a performing pianist. Helene Grimaud’s repertoire is very extensive and is representative of all major periods of music. On the evening of 9/11, 2001, Helene Grimaud performed Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto with the Orchestre de Paris and Christoph Eschenbach on a live, worldwide Broadcast. This special concert was heard by millions of listeners as the world mourned the tragic events of the day.
Dame Mitsuko Uchida was born in 1948 in Atami, Japan, and moved to Vienna with her diplomat parents when she was 12 years old. She enrolled in the Vienna Academy of Music to study with Richard Hauser and later, Wilhelm Kempff. She gave her first Viennese recital at the age of 14. Uchida was awarded prizes in several international competitions, most notably, the Second Prize in the 8th International Chopin Piano Competition. Mitsuko Uchida has recorded all of Mozart’s Sonatas for which she won a Grammy, as well as the complete Piano Concertos of Beethoven, and a Schubert piano cycle. From 2002 to 2007 she was artist-in-residence for the Cleveland Orchestra. Uchida has also been the Artistic Director of numerous Music Festivals. In 2012 Mitsuko Uchida was honored by the Royal Philharmonic Society with their Gold Medal. In 2009 she embarked on a 5-year project with the Cleveland Orchestra to record all of Mozart’s Concertos while serving both as Conductor and Piano Soloist. In 2011 Uchida won another Grammy for her dual role in two of the concertos.
Olga Kern was born in 1975 in Moscow into a family of musicians with the last name of Pushechnikova. Kern began studying piano at age 5 at the Central Music School of Moscow and gave her first concert in that city when she was 7. She won her first international competition at age 11 and at 17, she won first prize at the first Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition. Olga continued her education including postgraduate studies at the Moscow Conservatory with Sergei Dorensky and Boris Petrushansky. She adopted her mother’s surname, Kern, professionally as her international career developed. Olga Kern is one of the leading pianists of her generation and is the winner of many international competitions. Kern has conducted master classes throughout the world and has been a jury member for several international competitions. In 2016, she launched the Olga Kern International Piano Competition. Kern lives in NYC and in 2017, joined the piano faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.
Olga Kern attained international prominence when she became the first woman in over thirty years to receive the Gold Medal in the Eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2001, which she won jointly with Stanislav Ioudenitch.
Co-authors: Cesare Civetta and Dr. Anthony LaMagra