Rosina Lhévinne in Chopin and Debussy

Josef and Rosina Lhévinne

In my first post devoted to the little recorded pianist Rosina Lhévinne, I promised a second entry devoted to her Chopin first concerto and one of the few discs she made with her husband Josef before his early death in 1944. I am making good on that promise today, perhaps the only New Year's resolution I will keep all year.

Josef and Rosina's recording of Debussy's "Fêtes," in Ravel's two-piano version, comes from June 1935, and is one of two works they performed for commercial issue. (I do not possess the other, a Mozart sonata.) The rendition is spirited, emphasizing the festive rather than the nocturnal. My transfer comes from an early RCA Camden LP with excellent sound.

The main work is Rosina's second late-in-life concerto recording. Following the Mozart recording that marked her 80th birthday, she was invited into the Vanguard studios to tape Chopin's Concerto No. 1. Accompanying her was the clumsily named Members of the Alumni of the National Orchestral Association, under John Barnett. A word of explanation: the National Orchestral Association provided a training platform for orchestral players who were newly graduated from conservatory. The "Members of the Alumni" included musicians who had gone on to New York orchestras such as the Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. John Barnett was the director of the National Orchestral Association at the time, in succession to Léon Barzin, who had founded the organization in 1930.

The Members of the Alumni are very good, but in Chopin concertos almost all of the interest is in the solo part, and Lhévinne does not disappoint. Her playing displays the same grace and control that made the Mozart concerto such a success. It's a shame she was not asked to record more often.

Vanguard's sonics were dull, but I have done my best to bring out the elegant sound of Rosina Lhévinne's piano, with some success, I hope. The LP also included a performance of Schumann's Overture, Scherzo and Finale, which I have not transferred.

Mozart Concertos from Rosina Lhévinne

I thought I might follow up the Ania Dorfmann and Maryla Jonas posts with a selection of the recordings of another lesser-known woman pianist, Rosina Lhévinne.

Lhévinne made very few appearances in the recording studio and was principally known in her lifetime for being a noted piano teacher, with pupils including Van Cliburn and John Browning, as well as for being the wife of pianist Josef Lhévinne. The few items that were captured, however, show her to be a first-rate artist.

Rosina Bessie was a promising piano student in Moscow when she met Josef Lhévinne, marrying him soon after her 1898 graduation from the Conservatory, and quickly abandoning any career as a solo performer, although she did engage in duo-piano works with Josef. The pair came to the US following the World War, and they joined the Juilliard faculty several years later. Josef died in 1944.

The Lhévinnes only made two recordings together, to my knowledge – Debussy’s “Fêtes” and a Mozart sonata, both in the 1930s.

Today’s LPs include the first record that Rosina made following Josef’s death, a November 1947 rendition of Mozart’s Concerto for Three Pianos K.242, where she is joined by the duo-pianists Vitya Vronsky and Victor Babin, and accompanied by the Little Orchestra Society and conductor Thomas Scherman, in a recording from Liederkranz Hall. The transfer is from an early Columbia LP that also includes Vronsky and Babin in a showy version of Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos K.365 with the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra and Dimitri Mitropoulos. The latter dates from September 1945. The sound on both is good. Strangely, Columbia bills Rosina Lhévinne only as “Lhévinne” on the LP cover.

Jean Morel

Rosina is heard to best advantage, however, in today’s second album, recorded in May 1960 to mark her 80th birthday. This is a superior account of Mozart’s Concerto No. 21 in which she sounds just as youthful as the students in the accompanying Juilliard Orchestra (I suspect the ensemble also included faculty), led by Jean Morel, another famed teacher. (Vronsky and Babin also were instructors, and were on the Cleveland Institute of Music faculty for many years – Babin was the director of the school.) The sound from Columbia’s 30th Street Studio is as vibrant as the artistry. That is Josef Lhévinne’s portrait over Rosina’s shoulder on the LP cover up top.

I also have the Lhévinnes’ version of “Fêtes” and Rosina’s 1961 Chopin Concerto No. 1 if there is interest.