Olga Samaroff
Encyclopedia
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
, music critic, and teacher. Her second husband was conductor Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
.
Samaroff was born Lucy Mary Agnes Hickenlooper in San Antonio, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, and grew up in Galveston
Galveston, Texas
Galveston is a coastal city located on Galveston Island in the U.S. state of Texas. , the city had a total population of 47,743 within an area of...
, where her family owned a business later wiped out in the Great 1900 Galveston hurricane. There being then no great teachers in the United States, after her talent for the piano was discovered she was sent to Europe to study, first with Antoine François Marmontel
Antoine François Marmontel
Antoine François Marmontel was a French pianist, teacher and musicographer.Marmontel entered the Paris Conservatory in 1827. His teachers were Pierre Zimmerman in pianoforte, Victor Dourlen in harmony, Jacques Fromental Halévy in fugue and Jean-François Le Sueur in composition...
at the Conservatoire de Paris
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...
, and later with Ernst Jedliczka
Ernst Jedliczka
Ernst Jedliczka was a Russian-German pianist, piano pedagogue, and music critic. The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition stated that Jedliczka "did much to spread Russian music in Germany, placing Russian composers in a prominent place within his concerts and devoting them to a series of...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, where she married, very briefly, Russian engineer Boris Loutzky. After her divorce from Loutzky, and the disaster which claimed her family's business, she returned to the United States and tried to carve out a career as a pianist but soon discovered she was hampered both by her rather awkward name and her American origins. An agent suggested a change and her professional name was taken from a remote relative.
As Olga Samaroff, she self-produced her New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
debut at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
in 1905 (the first woman ever to do so), hiring the hall, the orchestra and the conductor Walter Damrosch, and making an overwhelming impression with her performance of Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's Piano Concerto No. 1
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky)
The Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky between November 1874 and February 1875. It was revised in the summer of 1879 and again in December 1888. The first version received heavy criticism from Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky's desired pianist....
. She played extensively in the United States and Europe thereafter. Samaroff discovered Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
(1882-1977) when he was church organist at St. Bartholemew's in New York and later conductor of the Cincinnati Orchestra. She played Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto under Stokowski's direction when he made his official conducting debut in Paris with the Colonne Orchestra on 12 May 1909. At that time much more famous than he, Samaroff lobbied her distinguished contacts to get him appointed (in 1912) to the vacant conductor's post at the famed Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
, launching his international career. She married Stokowski in 1911 and their daughter Sonya was born in 1921. Samaroff made a number of recordings in the early 1920s for the Victor Talking Machine Company
Victor Talking Machine Company
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....
.
In 1923, Samaroff and Stokowski divorced; the reasons included Stokowski's infidelity, from which she never recovered. She took refuge in her friends, among whom were George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
, Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
, and Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
. In 1925 Samaroff fell in her New York apartment, suffering an injury to her shoulder which forced her to retire from performing. She worked primarily as a critic and teacher from then on. She wrote for the New York Evening Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
until 1928, and gave guest lectures throughout the 1930s. Samaroff developed a course of music study for laymen and was the first music teacher to be broadcast on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
television. She taught at the Philadelphia Conservatory and in 1924 was invited to join the faculty of the newly formed Juilliard School
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
in New York. She taught at both schools for the rest of her life. Called "Madam" by her students, she was a tireless advocate for them, supplying many of her Depression-era charges with everything from concert clothes to food, and pressing officials at Juilliard to build a dormitory - a project that was not realized for decades after her death.
Her most famous pupil was concert pianist William Kapell
William Kapell
William Kapell was an outstanding American pianist who was killed in the crash of a commercial airliner.-Biography:...
who was killed in a 1953 plane crash at age 31. She herself said that the best pianist she ever taught was the New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
er Richard Farrell
Richard Farrell
Richard Farrell was a gifted New Zealand classical pianist who achieved almost legendary status, but whose flourishing career was cut short in a road accident at the age of 31...
, who also died at age 31, in a motor vehicle accident in England in 1958.
Olga Samaroff published an autobiography, An American Musician's Story, in 1939. Teacher to the end, she died of a heart attack at her home in New York on the evening of May 17, 1948 after giving several lessons that day.
Notable pupils
- Joseph Battista
- Isabelle Yalkovsky Byman
- Richard FarrellRichard FarrellRichard Farrell was a gifted New Zealand classical pianist who achieved almost legendary status, but whose flourishing career was cut short in a road accident at the age of 31...
- Stewart L. GordonStewart L. GordonStewart Lynell Gordon is an American musician, teacher, writer, editor, composer, and impresario.Currently Stewart Gordon is Professor of Keyboard Studies at the USC Thornton School of Music of the University of Southern California....
- Natalie HinderasNatalie HinderasNatalie Leota Henderson Hinderas was an American pianist, composer and professor at Pennsylvania's Temple University....
- Bruce HungerfordBruce HungerfordBruce Hungerford was an Australian pianist.Born in Korumburra, Victoria, Bruce Hungerford was originally named Leonard Hungerford...
- Jaime Ingram
- William KapellWilliam KapellWilliam Kapell was an outstanding American pianist who was killed in the crash of a commercial airliner.-Biography:...
- Raymond LewenthalRaymond LewenthalRaymond Lewenthal was an American pianist.-Biography:Lewenthal was born in San Antonio, Texas to Russian-French parents. His birth date is often given as 1926, but he was actually born three years earlier in 1923...
- Eugene ListEugene ListEugene List was an American concert pianist and teacher.-Early life:Eugene List was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He spent his formative years in Los Angeles, California where his father Louis List was a language teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District and his mother, Rose, a...
- Jerome LowenthalJerome LowenthalJerome Lowenthal is an American classical pianist. He is a professor of piano at the Juilliard School in New York, where he was also chair of the piano department. Additionally, Lowenthal is on the faculty at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California.He made his debut at 13 with the...
- Margaret Saunders OttMargaret Saunders OttMargaret Saunders Ott was a distinguished American pianist and teacher. Her career included teaching positions at Lebanon Valley Conservatory , Bishop School , Washington State University , Gonzaga University , Payap University , and most notably, Whitworth College , where she taught for 25...
- Vincent PersichettiVincent PersichettiVincent Ludwig Persichetti was an American composer, teacher, and pianist. An important musical educator and writer, Persichetti was a native of Philadelphia...
- Joseph Running
- Natalie Ryshna
- Thomas Schippers Thomas SchippersThomas Schippers was an American conductor. He was highly-regarded for his work in opera.-Biography:...
- Claudette Sorel
- Alfred TeltschikAlfred TeltschikAlfred Teltschik was an American duo pianist and teacher. He was born in Floresville, Texas to Frank and Lenora Teltschik.Alfred attended the Juilliard School of music, where he studied principally with Olga Samaroff...
- Rosalyn TureckRosalyn TureckRosalyn Tureck was an American pianist and harpsichordist who was particularly associated with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach...
- Alexis WeissenbergAlexis Weissenberg-Early life and career:Born into a Jewish family in Sofia, Weissenberg began taking piano lessons at the age of three from Pancho Vladigerov. He gave his first public performance at the age of eight. After escaping to what was then Palestine in 1945, where he studied under Leo Kestenberg, he went...
External links
http://olgasamaroff.com