Constance Keene

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Constance Keene (born February 9, 1921 in New York City , † December 24, 2005 there ) was an American pianist and music teacher.

Keene had her first piano lessons with Kathryn Makin . At the age of thirteen she became a student of the pianist and composer Abram Chasins , through whom she met pianists such as Leopold Godowsky and Józef Hofmann . In 1943 she won the Naumburg Piano Competition and made her debut in New York's Town Hall . Until the end of the war, she performed on behalf of the United Service Organizations in US Army facilities. In 1945 she went on her first professional concert tour, and in 1946 she represented the indisposed Vladimir Horowitz at a concert in Springfield. In 1949 she married her former teacher Chasins.

Keene and her husband recorded works for piano duo and gave concerts, among others. a. with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Serge Koussevitzky . She has appeared as a soloist with well-known American and European orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra , the Chicago Symphony Orchestra , the New York Philharmonic , the Hallé Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic . As a chamber musician she was successful, among other things, with performances with Yehudi Menuhin at the Gstaad Festival and a tour with Benny Goodman with George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue .

Keene has recorded compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach , Georg Friedrich Handel , Charles Tomlinson Griffes , Edward MacDowell , Robert Schumann , Ludwig van Beethoven , Sergei Rachmaninoff and Chasins, as well as all the piano sonatas by Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Carl Maria von Weber . Keene was also active as a piano teacher. She gave private lessons to Arthur Rubinstein's children and taught at the Manhattan School of Music from 1969 . From 1994 she was a member of the management of the school, which she honored with an honorary doctorate in 2004. She gave several master classes in Europe, Asia and South Africa and participated as a juror in piano competitions.

swell

personal data
SURNAME Keene, Constance
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pianist and music teacher
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 2005
Place of death New York City