This account about Ethel Leginska will be part of a forthcoming
encyclopedia of classical composers titled "Clef Notes" (for the
serious student of Western Classical Music).  Eventually I hope to
publish it on the Web, when complete.  It will cover composers from
Leonin (12th Century) to contemporary times.

Leginska,  Ethel
Pianist, Conductor
Born:  Hull, England, April 13, 1886
Died:  Los Angeles, February 26, 1970

Ethel Leginska was clearly a woman ahead of her time.  She was born
plain Ethel Liggins, the Polish-sounding nom de combat having been
urged on her by a patroness.  Musically precocious, she went to
Frankfurt to study at the Hoch Conservatory, but was chiefly known as
a Theodor Leschetizky (1830-1915) pupil.  She made her concert debut
in London and soon became known as a powerful if somewhat erratic
performer. In 1907 she married the American composer Emerson Whithorne
(1884-1958), ne' Whittern (another Leschetizky pupil), who became her
manager for a time.  They separated in 1912 and were divorced in 1916.

Leginska made her New York debut in 1913 and thereafter spent most
of her time in the United States.  She studied composition with Rubin
Goldmark (1872-1936) and Ernest Bloch, and in the 1920s had a good deal
of music performed, including the symphonic poem "Beyond the Fields We
Know" (after Lord Dunsany) and "Quatre Sujets Barbares" (after paintings
by Gaugin).  Increasingly she moved into conducting (she premiered the
latter work in Munich in 1924), and in the 1930s conducted the Boston
Philharmonic (she founded it in 1933), the Chicago Women's Orchestra,
and the Boston Women's Orchestra.

In 1935 friends raised $5,000 to have her opera "Gale" put on by
the foundering Chicago Civic Opera.  Four nights before its only
performance, conducted by the composer, nothing had been done about
staging it, and in the final event the principal, John Charles Thomas,
had not bothered to learn his part.  Leginska spent her last thirty
years teaching piano in Los Angeles.

She was among the more active performers for the reproducing piano,
having made 35 rolls for Artrio-Angelus and 24 for Aeolian Duo-Art.
Outstanding in the former grouping is the six-part "Souvenirs d'Italie"
of her mentor, Theodor Leschetizky (Roll Nos. 7640/45), the only known
complete recording of the suite.

Albert Petrak