Olga Samaroff

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Olga Samaroff

Olga Samaroff (born August 8, 1880 in San Antonio , † May 17, 1948 in New York City ) was an American pianist, music teacher and music critic. Her teachers included the illegitimate son of Charles-Valentin Alkan , Élie-Miriam Delaborde . Contrary to the popular opinion that the role of the first important pianist in the United States was William Kapell , this point of view is often changed in professional circles in favor of Kapell's teacher Olga Samaroff, who, from 1905 until her accident 20 years later, had a remarkable international pianist career had built.

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Olga Samaroff was born Lucy Mary Olga Agnes Hickenlooper in San Antonio, Texas. She grew up in Galveston , where her family later ran a business in the Galveston Hurricane around 1900. After her talent for piano was discovered, she was sent to Europe to study. There were no great piano teachers in the United States at the time. She first studied with Antoine François Marmontel and Alkan's son Élie-Miriam Delaborde at the Conservatoire de Paris and later with Ernst Jedliczka in Berlin. In Berlin she was briefly married to the Russian engineer Boris Loutzky.

After her divorce from Loutzky and the economic disaster that had ruined her family's business, she returned to the United States and tried to build a career as a pianist. She soon discovered that her artistic development was inhibited both by her name, which was not conducive to a career as an artist, and because of her American origins. Her agent suggested a change to the Samaroff surname , which she eventually adopted from a distant relative.

As Olga Samaroff , she made her own New York debut at Carnegie Hall in 1905 . She was the first woman to tackle a project of this nature on her own. She rented the hall, signed the orchestra and the conductor Walter Damrosch, and made an overwhelming impression when she performed Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. After this debut she gave numerous concerts in the United States and Europe.

Samaroff met Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977), the church organist of St. Bartholemew in New York and later conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra . She played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 under Stokowski's direction when he made his official conducting debut in Paris with the Colonne Orchestra on May 12, 1909 .

In 1911 she married Stokowski. In 1921 their daughter Sonya was born. At that time, Samaroff was far more famous than her husband. She was able to use her connections to ensure that Stokowski was appointed director of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1912 . This was the beginning of his international career. Samaroff made a number of recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company in the early 1920s . She was the second pianist in history after Hans von Bülow to perform all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in public. She preceded Artur Schnabel , who was only able to realize such a project around 1927. The German pianist Walter Gieseking also played the complete sonatas in public at the age of 15 (around 1910).

In 1923, Olga Samaroff and Stokowski divorced. One of the reasons was Stokowski's infidelity, which for a long time weighed heavily on Samaroff. She took refuge with her friends, including George Gershwin , Irving Berlin , Dorothy Parker and Cary Grant . In 1925, Samaroff fell into her New York apartment and sustained a shoulder injury that forced her to retire from playing the piano. From then on she worked mainly as a music critic and music teacher. She wrote for the New York Evening Post until 1928 and gave guest lectures in the 1930s.

Samaroff developed music studies for lay people and was the first music teacher to give lessons on NBC television. She taught at the Philadelphia Conservatory and was invited to work on the faculty of the newly formed Juilliard School in New York in 1924 . She taught in both schools for the rest of her life. She was addressed as a madam by her students and was a lawyer for them. She supported many of her students suffering from the economic depression with concert clothes and food. She also urged Juilliard officials to build a dormitory - a project that was only realized decades later after her death. Her best-known students include the pianist and university professor Eugene List and the concert pianist William Kapell , who died in a plane crash in 1953 at the age of 31. She herself said the best pianist she had ever taught was New Zealander Richard Farrell , who was also killed in a car accident in England in 1958 at the age of 31.

Samaroff published the autobiography An American Musician's Story in 1939 . On the evening of May 17, 1948, she died of a heart attack at her home in New York after teaching for several hours that day.

Samaroff is related to Civil War General Andrew Hickenlooper and Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper . In the latter's 2016 memoir, the latter explains that the name change from Hickenlooper to Samaroff was proposed by Samaroff's cousin, American federal judge Smith Hickenlooper.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This article is a translation of the article of the same name on the English language Wikipedia.
  2. ↑ So z. B. SWR2. In: SWR2 Musik Klassiker, The pianist Olga Samaroff . On the microphone Jens Hagestedt, broadcast on December 18, 2018.
  3. ^ John Hickenlooper: The Opposite of Woe, My Life in Beer and Politics . Penguin Press, New York 2016, pp. 112 .
personal data
SURNAME Samaroff, Olga
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hickenlooper, Lucy Mary Olga Agnes (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pianist, music educator, and music critic
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH San Antonio
DATE OF DEATH May 17, 1948
Place of death New York City