Our 2011/2012 Season
March 11, 2012
Ann Schein, piano
The Washington Post has said “Thank heaven for Ann Schein…what a relief it is to hear a pianist who, with no muss or fuss, simply reaches right into the heart of whatever she is playing – and creates music so powerful you cannot tear yourself away.” From her first recordings for Kapp Records, and her highly acclaimed Carnegie Hall recital debut as a performer on the Sol Hurok roster, Ann Schein’s amazing career has earned her high praise in major American and European cities and in more than 50 countries around the world.
She has performed with conductors including George Szell, James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, James dePreist, Stanislaw Skrowacewski, David Zinman, and Sir Colin Davis, and with major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the Washington National Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the London Symphony, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. She performed at the White House during the Kennedy administration, and is one of an exclusive roster of pianists chosen to present piano recitals sponsored by the Adams Foundation Piano Recital Series in new venues in American cities and communities.
In 1980-81, Ann Schein extended the legacy of her teachers, Arthur Rubinstein, Mieczyslaw Munz, and Dame Myra Hess by performing 6 concerts of the major Chopin repertoire in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in an entire season to outstanding reviews and sold-out houses, the first Chopin cycle presented in New York in 35 years.
Ms. Schein has received many distinguished honors for her Chopin performances and recordings. The Marston label has included her Nouvelle Etude in A-flat Major recorded for Kapp Records in 1958 in their special collection of outstanding Chopin performances, titled “A Century of Romantic Chopin”, and in which her biography reads, “Ann Schein was trained in her native United States, where she studied with both Mieczyslaw Munz and Arthur Rubinstein. Her first recordings, made when she was 18 and 19, established her as one of the premiere Chopin pianists of our time.”