RRC Blog

As a young musician, Pulitzer Prize winning composer George Walker was dead-set on becoming a concert pianist. He had found his love for the piano at age 5 and by the time he was 15, was given a scholarship to the Oberlin Conservatory. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree at 18, he began his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music with legendary pianist Rudolf Serkin. But Walker often disagreed with Serkin’s approach:

In 1925, one year after Curtis's founding, Josef Hofmann accepted 11-year-old  Lucie Stern into his highly competitive piano studio. Even at that young age Stern was an accomplished pianist and many considered her, both at Curtis and the wider music community, a true prodigy. However, Stern’s life was tragically cut short in 1938 and the brevity of her career, though exceptional, has led it to fade over time. In celebration of Women’s History Month, we remember Lucie Stern and bring her legacy back into the light.

A truly versatile singer, Curtis alumna Irra Petina was well known for both her operatic and Broadway roles

Russian-American mezzo-soprano and actress Irra Petina (Voice ’35) was born on April 18, 1908 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The daughter of  wealthy   parents, she and her family were forced to flee to avoid persecution following the 1917 Bolshevik uprising. They made their way to  China where, for twelve years, Petina received her first formal vocal training, largely from fellow Russian emigres.  When she was 21,  Petina traveled to Philadelphia   to audition for admission to Curtis. She was accepted as a voice student of Harriet van Emden in 1930.

The subject of student life is rarely well documented in archival collections. To find out how students experienced life outside their lessons and practice time, we depend on the personal memorabilia and recollections of alumni. Such contributions are the basis of Curtis’s recent exhibit on student life. Thanks to our most senior alumni and faculty, life at Curtis in the 1940s is well documented, while the late Eleanor Sokoloff (Piano ’38) kindly allowed us to record her personal recollections of student life in the 1930s.