Up for auction a RARE! "British Pianist" Ethel Leginska Hand Signed 3X5 Card.This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity. ES - 1999 In 1907 Leginska
married the composer Emerson Whithorne, whom she had met when they both studied in
Vienna. They would sometimes perform together, with him playing the second part
in two-piano pieces on her recitals and from the time they married through 1909
him serving as her concert manager. He later wrote music criticism for
"Musical America" and "Paul Mall Gazette", and as a
composer, he had his music performed frequently in the 1920s and 1930s. She and Emerson Whithorne had one son, Cedric
Whithorne, born in September 1908 after the couple returned from visiting
Whithorne's native United States. They did so at least once prior to their
divorce, traveling to Cleveland, OH where Leginska make her unofficial American
debut in Cleveland's Hippodrome, a vaudeville theater. Nonetheless, the couple separated in 1910 and
divorced in 1916. After an unsuccessful custody fight for her son
Cedric, Leginska became even more outspoken about
inadequate opportunities for women, stating that self-sacrifice for family's sake
is "over-rated" and that "it is impossible for a woman with a
career to be unselfish". From her official American debut in New York's Aeolian Hall on
20 January 1913, Leginska's popularity in the U.S. was growing,
aided by both the careful staging of her performances, with well-thought-out
lighting and decor to focus on the performer, and her distinctive style of
dressing (favoring menswear) eagerly copied by her young fans, as well as her
diminutive size and her youthful appearance that not only made the musical
youth more likely to relate to her, but often misled not only her audiences but
even the reviewers who would express their astonishment that a person so "young"
displayed such skill as hers (this going on all the way into Leginska's late
thirties, as made evident in the Detroit News critic Robert Kelly's description
of her perform at 37). In 1923, Leginska went to London to study
orchestral conducting with Eugene Goossens. She also studied conducting with Robert Heger, conductor of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, proceeding to conduct as guest conductor
with major orchestras in Munich, Paris, London or Berlin, taking advantage of
her earlier contacts established when she performed as a pianist, as well as
agreeing to also perform in a concerto on the programs. Being a woman conductor also helped her attract
attention, as a novelty. She conducted a performance of her orchestral
suite Quatre sujets barbares. In 1925, she made her debut as a conductor in
the United States with the New York Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, after which she appeared with the Boston
People's Orchestra in the spring and then performing at the Hollywood Bowl in
the summer of 1925. She had suffered nervous breakdowns in 1909, 1925 and 1926. In 1926 she announced a permanent retirement
from performing as a pianist and focused on conducting, composing and teaching.
Though her output as a
composer was limited, she distinguished herself as an organizer, establishing
the Boston Philharmonic
Orchestra which she conducted (1926–27), heading the Boston Woman's Symphony Orchestra (1926-1930) with which
she went on two extensive tours. She also directed the Boston English Opera
Company, founded the National Women's Symphony
Orchestra in New York in 1932 and served as director of the Chicago Women's Symphony
Orchestra. In the late 1930s, when her conducting opportunities
began to diminish as her novelty wore off, she left the U.S. again, to teach
piano in London and Paris before settling in 1939 in Los Angeles. She opened a
piano studio and was a well-respected teacher into the 1950s. In the meantime, in
1943, she founded the concert series New Ventures in Music, with
Mary Holloway, mainly to promote her pupils. In 1957 she once again
conducted - a Los Angeles performance of her first opera The Rose and
the Ring, written in 1932. Ethel Leginska died in Los Angeles of a stroke
on 26 February 1970, aged 83 |