Illustrating the adage (coined by me, I believe) that no one can ever get away from Philadelphia forever, the pianist Eugene List – who was born there 100 years ago today – returned from a childhood spent in Los Angeles to study piano with Olga Samaroff. Samaroff herself, of course, was born in Austin, TX, as Lucy Hickenlooper and later married Leopold Stokowski.
The prodigious List had already made his orchestral debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He rode the bus back to Philly to enter into a competition to study with Samaroff, who would train a remarkable stable of pianists, including Richard Farrell, Natalie Hinderas, William Kapell, Raymond Lewenthal, Rosalyn Tureck, and Alexis Weissenberg. In his second year with Samaroff, he won another competition which allowed him to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra. At the behest of Stokowski, he ditched his plans to play the Schumann concerto and instead played the American premiere of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
While never entirely eschewing the standard Romantic literature, List was renowned for his devotion to neglected repertoire, including underserved works of Edward MacDowell and especially Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a revival of whose music he spearheaded. In particular, he drew attention for recreating some of Gottschalk’s “monster concerts,” which involved enormous numbers of pianists. He gave the American premiere of Carlos Chavez’s Piano Concerto (with the New York Philharmonic). He also edited the complete works of Stephen Foster.
Motivated by the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, he promptly enlisted in the US Army at the age of 26. Initially, he was given an office job as a typist at the New York Port of Embarkation, but soon he was transferred to the Army Special Services Division. At the postwar Potsdam Conference, he was asked to play for Harry S. Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin. For Chopin’s Waltz in A-flat, Op. 42, a work he had not memorized, Truman acted as his page-turner. This earned List a reputation as “Pianist of the Presidents.” He played at the White House many times; the last was for Jimmy Carter in 1980.
List’s later life was marred by tragedy. In 1983, after 42 years of marriage, his wife, the violinist Carroll Glenn, slipped into a coma only days after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Two years later, while planning a recital to mark the 50th anniversary of his Carnegie Hall debut, List fell down the steps of his New York brownstone and broke his neck. He was 66 years-old.
List was a familiar presence on radio and television, and he even appeared in a movie, “The Bachelor’s Daughters,” in 1946.
We’ll hear List perform music by Gottschalk and Howard Hanson, alongside observances of the birthdays today of composers Hanns Eisler, Elisabeth Lutyens, and Wenzel Thomas Matiegka, and pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy – all to come between 4 and 6 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Then stick around for music from cinematic adaptations of the books of Jane Austen on “Picture Perfect” at 6!
PHOTO: Eugene List and Carroll Glenn