Ethel Leginska

Ethel Leginska (actually Ethel Liggins, born April 13, 1886 in Hull, † February 26, 1970 in Los Angeles ) was an English pianist, conductor and composer.

Life

Ethel Liggins has already performed at the age of six years in public as a pianist and made his debut at the age of ten years in London's Queen 's Hall. She then studied in Frankfurt am Main with James Kwast and in Vienna for three years at Theodor Leschetizky. On the advice of the singer Lady Maud Warrender she slept with the Slavic -sounding name Leginska. After successful tours of Europe in 1913, she went to the USA where she made her debut at New York's Aeolian Hall and was soon praised by the New York Herald Tribune as "the Paderewski of women pianists ".

In addition to her successful career as a concert pianist Leginska took with Rubin Goldmark and Ernest Bloch since 1914 composition lessons; their first publicly performed work was a string quartet, followed by the symphonic poem Beyond the Fields We Know.

1923 Leginska went to London to study conducting with Eugène Aynsley Goossens. The following year she worked with Robert Heger, conductor of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and conducted a performance of their orchestral suite Quatre sujets barbares.

In 1925 she made ​​her debut as a conductor in the United States with the New York Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. In the same year, she conducted the first woman to the Hollywood Bowl. She then went to Boston, where they the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1926 the Women's Symphony Orchestra of Boston founded, with whom she went on two tours in 1930 until its dissolution.

1932 Leginska founded in New York a second wife Orchestra, the National Women's Symphony Orchestra. In the late 1930s she lived in London and Paris before settling in 1939 in Los Angeles. There they founded the Concert Office New Ventures in Music and worked as a piano teacher. Her students included, among others, James Fields, Daniel Pollack and Bruce Sutherland.

From Leginska a series recordings with works by Schubert, Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff at the label, Columbia Records are obtained which are newly published 2002 Ivory Classics than CDs.

Works

  • String Quartet
  • Beyond the Fields We Know, symphonic poem
  • Quatre sujets barbares, Suite 1924
  • Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, 1925
  • Gale, opera, 1935
  • The Rose and the Ring, opera, 1957
Aeolian Hall (Manhattan) Integrated Authority File
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