Vera Brodsky Lawrence | |
|---|---|
 Publicity photo of Brodsky Lawrence, 1943 | |
| Born | Vera Rebecca Brodsky July 1, 1909 |
| Died | September 18, 1996 (aged 87) New York City, US |
| Education | |
| Occupations |
|
| Organizations |
|
| Spouse |
Theodore Lawrence
(m. 1944; died 1964) |
| Awards |
|
Vera Brodsky Lawrence (born Vera Rebecca Brodsky; July 1, 1909 – September 18, 1996) was an American pianist, music historian, and editor. A child prodigy, she left her native Virginia to enroll at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, where she studied with Josef and Rosina Lhévinne. After graduating, she traveled to Europe where she met Harold Triggs in 1932 and formed a piano duo that played classical music and arrangements of popular music of the era.
In 1938, she became a staff pianist for CBS and embarked on a solo career. Aside from performing live solo recitals, song recital accompaniments, and chamber music, she was the host of a weekly radio show where she played modern and lesser-known compositions. During World War II, she played the Western broadcast and concert premieres of Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Sonata No. 2, and had exclusive performing rights to it for a period. She also gave the Western broadcast premieres of Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 8 and an excerpt from his opera War and Peace.
The death of her husband in an automobile accident in 1964 compelled her to abandon her career as a pianist, destroy her personal documents, and become a musicologist. She edited the complete works] of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the first edition of its kind for any American composer, and the collected works of Scott Joplin, becoming a crucial figure in the revivals of their music. She co-edited the score of the latter's opera Treemonisha and was the artistic consultant for its successful performance at the Houston Grand Opera in 1976.
Her final years were spent writing an overview of early American musical culture and a three-volume survey of musical life in 19th-century New York City based on the diaries of George Templeton Strong. The final volume was left just short of completion when she died in 1996.