Ethel Leginska

Ethel Liggins (13 April 188626 February 1970) was a British pianist, conductor and composer. A student of Theodor Leschetizky, she became widely known as the ‘Paderewski of woman pianists’ and (from 1923) established herself as one of the first female conductors.

She studied composition with Rubin Goldmark and Ernest Bloch, and conducting with Eugene Goossens, Robert Heger and Gennaro Papi and conducted many of the world's leading orchestras from the mid-1920s. She was a pioneer of women's opportunity in music performance, composition and conducting.

Education and marriage Ethel Liggins was born in Hull, Yorkshire, England, to Thomas and Annie Peck Liggins. She made her debut as a pianist in London in 1902 at the age of 16. and from 1906 performed in Europe under the stage name Ethel Leginska, at the suggestion of British socialite Lady Maud Warrender (the wife of Sir George Warrender). At that time the best top-class musicians were Polish, hence the Polish-sounding name "Leginska" considered advantageous to the development of the young pianist musical career.

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 "Pall Mall Gazette", and as a composer, he had his music performed frequently in the 1920s and 1930s. Nonetheless, the couple separated in 1910 and divorced in 1916. In 1926 she announced a permanent retirement from performing as a pianist and focused on conducting, composing and teaching. 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 Woman's Symphony Orchestra of Chicago.

As teacher In a book by Harriette Brower, Piano Mastery: Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers published in 1915, the following is said about Leginska: "I believe in absolute freedom in all parts of the arm, shoulder to fingertips. Rigidity seems to me the most reprehensible thing when playing the piano, which is the most common of all kinds of performers default."

In 1943, Leginska and her concert manager, Mary V. Holloway, founded the concert series New Ventures in Music with the purpose of introducing her talented young pupils to the public by having them perform works of the great composers in recital. The scope of the concerts were such that by the end of the second year of the series, the two books of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier as well as all of Beethoven's sonatas and variations had been performed by the young musicians. The third and fourth series of concerts were devoted to the entire works of Chopin and Schumann. and lessons in composition with Ernest Bloch in New York from the summer of 1918 on. She performed in a concert of her piano works in London on 8 July 1922, and gave a concert of her orchestral works at Queen's Hall on 22 November 1922. In 1957 she gave the premiere of her opera The Rose and the Ring, based on William Makepeace Thackeray's story of the same name, in Los Angeles, 25 years after its composition.

Works Ethel Leginska's body of work is relatively small, consisting of piano pieces and songs, excluding her orchestral works and three operas. Among her major compositions are quartets for strings and piano, four Poems and six nursery rhymes. Many of her works are still unpublished.

Melodies Kalte I Have a Rendezvous With Death Sorrow Quatre mélodies (1919, Ed. Schirmer) At Dawn (text by Arthur Symons) Bird Voices of Spring (text C.S. Whittern) The Frozen Heart (text by Otto Julius Bierbaum) The Gallows Tree (over text of an old ballade) In a Garden''' for baritono, tenor, and soprano (words by Ethel Leginska — 1928)Six Nursery Rhymes, for soprano ad lib. and piano or chamber orchestra (1925) Jack and Jill Three Mice Sleepe Baby Sleep Georgy Porgy Little Boy Blue Old King ColeForgottenOrchestralBeyond the Fields We Know, symphonic poem (New York 12 February 1922)Quatre sujets barbares, after Paul Gauguin, (Munich 13 December 1924) Two Short pieces for orchestra (Boston 29 February 1924 for Pierre Monteux) Fantasie for piano and orchestre (New York 3 January 1926)

Chamber musicQuatuor à cordes, after four poems by Tagore (Boston, 25 April 1921)From a Life, for 13 instruments (New York 9 January 1922) Allegro energico Lento dolentissimo VivaceTriptych, for 11 instruments solo (Chicago 29 January 1928)

PianoThe Gargoyles of Notre Dame (1920, Ed. Composer's Music Corporation 1922)Scherzo after Tagore (1920, Ed. Composer's Music Corporation 1922)At NightCradle Song (1922)Dance of a Little ClownDance of a Puppet (1924)Three Victorian Portraits (Suite in three movements) Nostalgic Waltz A Dirge Heroic Impromptu

Opera Gale, the Haunting, Opera in one act (Chicago 23 November 1935) The Rose and the Ring Opera (1932, Los Angeles 23 February 1957) Joan of Arc'' (Los Angeles 10 May 1969)