Cécile Staub Genhart

Cécile Staub Genhart (1898–1983) was a Swiss American pianist, pedagogue and teacher. Born in Basel, she played with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1922. She moved to the United States and joined the faculty of Eastman School of Music in 1926. She spent over 40 years teaching at Eastman.

Early life in Europe Cécile Staub was born in December 1898 in Basel, Switzerland. She was the youngest of three daughters of Fannie (née Häusler) and Gottfried Staub, a piano professor at Basel Conservatory. She was later educated at the Munich Royal Academy.

She studied independently with the Swiss composer Emil Frey in Zürich, she only visited him occasionally to discuss composition and music. She was also responsible for the introduction of Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 to Rochester, New York. Among her students were Robert Silverman, Ernesto Lejano, Anne Koscielny, Aiko Onishi, Gordon wrote his doctoral dissertation, "Cecile Staub Genhart; her biography and her concepts of piano playing" in 1965. In 1974, she donated approximately $50,000 to establish a piano scholarship fund at the Eastman School of Music.