OLGA SAMAROFF (SAN
ANTONIO, TEXAS, AUGUST 8, 1880 – NEW YORK, MAY 17, 1948)
Samaroff was born Lucy Mary Olga
Agnes Hickenlooper in San Antonio, Texas, and grew up in Galveston, where her
family owned a business later wiped out in the 1900 Galveston hurricane. After
her talent for the piano was discovered, she was sent to Europe to study, since
at that time there were no great piano teachers in the United States. 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. While
in Berlin, she was very briefly married to Russian engineer Boris Loutzky.
After her divorce from Loutzky and the disaster which claimed her family's
business, she returned to the United States and tried to carve out a career as
a pianist. However, she soon discovered she was hampered both by her awkward
name and her American origins. Her agent suggested a professional name change,
which was taken from a remote relative. As Olga Samaroff, she self-produced her
New York debut at Carnegie Hall in 1905 (the first woman ever to do so). She
hired the hall, the orchestra, and conductor Walter Damrosch, and made an
overwhelming impression with her performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto
No. 1. She played extensively in the United States and Europe thereafter.
Samaroff discovered Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) when he was church organist
at St. Bartholemew's 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. She married Stokowski in 1911, and their daughter
Sonya was born in 1921. At that time, Samaroff was much more famous than her
husband and was able to lobby her contacts to get Stokowski appointed in 1912
to the vacant conductor's post at the Philadelphia Orchestra, launching his
international career. Samaroff made a number of recordings in the early 1920s
for the Victor Talking Machine Company. Samaroff was the second pianist in
history, after Hans von Bülow, to perform all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in
public, preceding Artur Schnabel (who did the series first in 1927) by several
years. German pianist Walter Gieseking would also perform the complete sonatas
in public by age fifteen (circa 1910). In 1923, Samaroff and Stokowski divorced;
the reasons included Stokowski's infidelity, from which she never recovered.
She took refuge in her friends, among whom were George Gershwin, Irving Berlin,
Dorothy Parker, and Cary Grant. In 1925, Samaroff fell in her New York
apartment and suffered an injury to her shoulder. The injury forced her to
retire from performing. So from that point on, she worked primarily as a critic
and teacher. She also wrote for the New York Evening Post until 1928, and she
gave guest lectures throughout the 1930s. Samaroff developed a course of music
study for laymen and was the first music teacher to be broadcast on NBC
television. She taught at the Philadelphia Conservatory and in 1924, was
invited to join the faculty of the newly formed Juilliard School in New York.
She taught at both schools for the rest of her life. Called "Madam"
by her students, she was an advocate for them. She supplied many of her
Depression-era charges with concert clothes and food. She also pressed
officials at Juilliard to build a dormitory – a project that was not realized
until after her death decades later. Her most famous pupil was concert pianist
William Kapell, who was killed in a 1953 plane crash at age 31. She herself
said that the best pianist she ever taught was the New Zealander Richard
Farrell, who also died at age 31, in a motor vehicle accident in England in
1958. Samaroff published an autobiography, An American Musician's Story, in
1939. She died of a heart attack at her home in New York on the evening of May
17, 1948, after giving several lessons that day. Samaroff is related to Civil
War general Andrew Hickenlooper and to Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. In
Hickenlooper's 2016 memoir, he states that the name change from Hickenlooper to
Samaroff was suggested by Samaroff's cousin and Federal Judge Smith
Hickenlooper.
TRACKLIST
Olga Samaroff made 10 Welte-Mignon piano rolls
1. 1472 WELTE-MIGNON CHOPIN- Piano Sonata No.
3, Op. 58, b 1st & 2nd mvts.
2. 1473 WELTE-MIGNON CHOPIN- Piano Sonata No.
3, Op. 58, b 3rd & 4th mvts.
3. 1474 WELTE-MIGNON WAGNER-LISZT - March from
the Opera “Tannhäuser”
4. 1476 WELTE-MIGNON BRAHMS - Rhapsody, Op. 79,
No. 2, g
5. 1478 WELTE-MIGNON GRIEG - Piano Concerto,
Op. 16, a 1st mvt.
6. 1479 WELTE-MIGNON GRIEG -”Peer Gynt” Op. 46,
Nos. 1 Morning Mood; 2 Aase’s Death
7. 1480 WELTE-MIGNON GRIEG - “Peer Gynt”,Op.
46, Nos. 3 Anitra’s Dance; 4 In the Hall Mountain King
8. 1481 WELTE-MIGNON FAURE - Impromptu No. 2,
Op. 31, f
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