Jeanne Behrend

Jeanne Behrend (* 1911 in Philadelphia ; † March 20, 1988 there ) was an American pianist .

Behrend studied piano with Józef Hofmann and composition with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute of Music until 1934 . In 1937 she made her debut at Carnegie Hall with a program in which she also presented her own sonata .

Behrend specialized in the piano works of American composers. After the Second World War, with the support of the US State Department and at the invitation of Heitor Villa-Lobos , she undertook the first of several tours through South America. Villa-Lobos called her "a heroine of the Americas".

In 1959 she founded the Philadelphia Festival of Western Hemisphere Music in Philadelphia , for which she was awarded the Southern Cross by the Brazilian government in 1964 . She has taught at the Curtis Institute, the Juilliard School of Music , the Western College in Ohio, the Philadelphia Conservatory, and Temple University . Since 1969 she was a member of the Philadelphia Music Academy , where she taught piano and in 1974 offered courses for adult piano beginners.

Behrend published songs by Stephen Foster , early American choral works and, as a Gottschalk expert, the piano works and the autobiography Notes of a Pianist by the composer and pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk .

She played piano works by American composers such as John Alden Carpenter , David Wendell Guion , Daniel Gregory Mason and Edward MacDowell . In 1948 she played the first complete performance of Samuel Barbers Excursions , to which his Interlude No.1 ("Adagio for Jeanne") had dedicated to her, in New York's Town Hall . For MGM she recorded an LP with piano works by Gottschalk, for Allegro sonatas by Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Alexander Reinagle, and preludes by Robert Palmer .

With her husband, the pianist Alexander Kelberine , Behrend recorded the Concerto for Two Pianos by Harl McDonald with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski in 1937 .

Behrend left behind a narrow compositional work. Józef Hofmann performed The Old Scissors Grinder , a solo piece for the piano, in London in 1926 . In addition, Quiet Piece and Dance into Spring for the piano, a string quartet , lamentation for viola and piano, songs and a cantata have come down to us.