Tina Lerner (Gerlach portrait, BPL Hale Coll)

Tina Lerner (June 5, 1889 – after 1947; in Cyrillic, Тина Лернер) was a Russian-American concert pianist born in

Odessa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...

Early life

Valentina Osipovna Lerner was the daughter of

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

writers

Osip Mikhailovich Lerner Osip Mikhailovich Lerner (13 January 1847 – 23 January 1907), also known as Y. Y. (Yosef Yehuda) Lerner, was a 19th-century Russian Jewish intellectual, writer, and critic. Originally a ''maskil''—a propagator of the ''Has ...

and Mariam Rabinovitch. She showed musical promise from an early age, in her birthplace, Odessa. She studied at Moscow Conservatory and with Leopold Godowsky, and began performing while still a teenager."Tina Lerner, a Gifted Pianist"
''Musical Courier'' (November 4, 1908): 16.

Career

Lerner performed in Germany and England before she toured North America in 1908 and 1909, performing with orchestras in major cities, starting in New York with a concert at

Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...

. She returned to perform in London in 1912, before embarking on her third American tour (1912-1913). "An audience that represented the wealth and culture of San Francisco went into ecstasies of delight over her remarkable playing of the Tschaikowski Concerto," according to the San Francisco Orchestra's manager, Frank W. Healy. Her fifth American tour commenced in 1917. She toured in South America in 1922. In 1917, she was one of the first pianists to give a concert over a radio telephone, when she played aboard a steamship in the Pacific Ocean in a concert that was transmitted to other steamships between San Francisco and Honolulu, on the occasion of George Washington's birthday. Her performances of works by Chopin and Tchaikovsky were captured on piano rolls. She lived in

Syracuse, New York Syracuse ( ) is a City (New York), city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, Onondaga County, New York, United States. It is the fifth-most populous city in the state of New York following New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffa ...

in the 1920s, and taught piano master classes at

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...

. Shavitch and Lerner gave a concert together at the

Hollywood Bowl The Hollywood Bowl is an amphitheatre in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was named one of the 10 best live music venues in America by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine in 2018. The Hollywood Bowl is known for its distin ...

in 1927.

Personal life

Tina Lerner married twice, both times to musicians. She married Luis Bachner in 1909 and divorced him in 1915. She married conductor Vladimir Shavitch in 1915, a few days after her first marriage was officially ended. The Shavitches had a daughter, Dollina, born in 1916. Tina Lerner was widowed when Vladimir Shavitch died in 1947; she was living in Florence, Italy, with their daughter by then. Tina Lerner's grave is in the Cimitero Monumentale della Misericordia at Antella, near Florence.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lerner, Tina Syracuse University faculty American women classical pianists American classical pianists Russian women pianists Russian classical pianists Musicians from Odesa 1889 births 20th-century deaths Year of death missing 20th-century American women pianists 20th-century American pianists Odesa Jews Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States American women academics Moscow Conservatory alumni