Lucie Stern
Lucie Stern was a Russian classical pianist.
Early life and education
Stern was born in Riga, Russian Empire, the daughter of piano teacher Paula Goldberg. Recognised as a child prodigy at an early age, she began studying piano at the Berlin Academy of Music in the class of Egon Petri and under the guidance of Leonid Kreutzer at six and a half. She became the academy's youngest student ever. In the fall of 1924, during a family visit to the US, Stern caught the attention of Josef Hofmann while giving several small-scale concerts. By September 1925, she had been invited to join his class at the Curtis Institute of Music and received a scholarship.Hofmann described Stern as "the rarest talent of any child I ever heard" and dedicated close attention to nurturing her talent, as he also did with her classmate, Shura Cherkassky. In light of the interpretation of a Liszt sonata, Hofmann wrote enthusiastically to the founder of the Institute, Mary Louise Curtis, about the progress made by the young pianist under his influence. "You would have been amazed! Lyrics were lyrics! The Mephistophelean types soared like a volcano. They spewed fire!!... She will become great!"
Career
Having gained experience through solo and orchestra concerts in Germany and Central Europe, which caused astonishment given the pianist's very young age, she made her US debut on 21 December 1924, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Mikhail Press, at the Philadelphia Academy for Music, performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B major with success. "Stern was enthusiastically received by the audience that completely filled every seat in the auditorium. She was recalled many times."On 17 April 1925, at the age of 11, she made her debut at Town Hall in New York City with a solo recital. Two years later, on 14 February 1927, she performed a demanding program at Carnegie Hall, including the "Bach-Busoni Chaconne, the Brahms-Paganini Variations, the Chopin B-flat minor sonata, Josef Hofmann's, Liszt's transcription of Schubert's 'Erl-King', a nocturne written by Miss Stern herself, and, for good measure, Balakireff's Islamey". A "recital program in doses... indicate that the performer has a gigantic and... has memorized a number of the greatest pages of piano music" as Olin Downes wrote in The New York Times. Downes saw this in Stern, but argued that music is not a question of technique but of expression, and that the young pianist lacked mature interpretative qualities beyond those of many other concert pianists.
In 1929, she left the Curtis Institute and performed with considerable success in the cultural capitals of Europe and the US. From 1937 onwards, Stern resumed studies with Hofmann, while continuing her concert activities.
Stern died in Mount Sinai Hospital, Manhattan, after a short illness at age 24. She is buried at Har Nebo Cemetery, Frankford, Philadelphia.
Recording and compositions
At the age of 13, Stern recorded a piano roll, performing Chopin'sImpromptu No. 1 in A-flat major, Op. 29 for the American Piano Company, which was released in 1926.
Little is known about the pianist's compositions, which are considered lost. Stern occasionally enriched her solo programs with one of her nocturnes, which the German composer and musicologist Walther Hirschberg described as following in the footsteps of Chopin and Liszt, on the occasion of her recital on 23 September 1927 in the Beethovensaal in Berlin.