Constance Keene (9 February 1921 – 24 December 2005) was an American pianist, who was renowned for her 1964 recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Preludes and won critical acclaim for her recordings of the works of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Carl Maria von Weber and Felix Mendelssohn, as well as Rachmaninoff's Études-Tableaux, Op. 33 and Études-Tableaux, Op. 39.
She was raised in Brooklyn, New York City. One of her teachers was Abram Chasins. She won the Naumburg Piano Competition in 1943. In 1946, she stood in for Vladimir Horowitz when he was unavailable for a concert, and she asserted that she was the only female pianist ever to have been given this honor. She also appeared with Benny Goodman and his orchestra in a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. In 1949 she married Chasins, who died in 1987. They performed and recorded music for piano duo.
Through her husband, who had himself studied with pianist Josef Hofmann, she met other concert pianists, including Vladimir Horowitz. She and Chasins regularly socialized and played bridge with Horowitz and his wife Wanda Toscanini Horowitz during Horowitz's 12-year retirement from the concert stage. As a teen she met Hofmann, Godowsky, and Rachmaninoff; as an adult she and Chasins helped Van Cliburn before his rise to fame. She was close to William Kapell, Abbey Simon, and other pianists. Later in life she often hosted rising young pianists such as Evgeny Kissin and Lang Lang at her Upper West Side home.
She later became an accomplished teacher herself. Her pupils included the children of Arthur Rubinstein, who said of her performances of Rachmaninoff's Preludes that he was "flabbergasted by the colour, sweep and imagination and ... incredible technique. I cannot imagine anybody, including Rachmaninoff, playing the piano so beautifully".[1]
Pianist Peter Nero was one of Constance's pupils as a young man. Despite being a prodigy and winning piano contests in the New York City area, when he started studying with her, Mr. Nero claimed, "She changed my whole life" in regards to piano technique. "I owe it all to Constance", he claimed in later life.
Composer B. J. Rosco,[2] among others, also studied with Keene.
For many years, she was on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, served as the chair of the Piano Department, and was a member of its board of trustees. She was also sought out as a piano competition adjudicator.
^Obituary. The Independent, 3 February 2006.
^Cohen, Aaron I. (1987). International Encyclopedia of Women Composers. Books & Music (USA). p. 600. ISBN 978-0-313-24272-4.
ConstanceKeene (9 February 1921 – 24 December 2005) was an American pianist, who was renowned for her 1964 recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Preludes...
there as a teenager, studied with Lev Oborin in Moscow and then with ConstanceKeene and Abram Chasins in New York City, and burst upon the international...
studied part-time. He took private lessons from Abram Chasins and ConstanceKeene. Keene once wrote in an issue of Keyboard Classics "Vladimir Horowitz was...
his E flat minor Prelude as the program's theme. In 1949 he married ConstanceKeene, a pianist and former student of his, with whom he performed and recorded...
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Czech-born American pianist Tara Kamangar (fl. 2005), pianist and composer ConstanceKeene (1921–2005), pianist and educator Anne Gamble Kennedy (1920–2001),...
Katchen Peter Katin Cyprien Katsaris Amir Katz Martin Katz Mindru Katz ConstanceKeene Simone Keller Freddy Kempf Wilhelm Kempff Sean Kennard Kevin Kenner...
teaching career at the Manhattan School, where she taught alongside ConstanceKeene. Among her students were David Bar-Ilan and Abbey Simon. Zaslavsky...
Georg Johannesen, 74, Norwegian author and professor of rhetoric. ConstanceKeene, 84, American classical pianist known for playing the romantic repertoire...
Dora Zaslavsky Koch Piano Scholarship, he was invited to study with ConstanceKeene, at Manhattan School of Music, where he earned Bachelor of Music, Master...
Friedrich Nietzsche: John Bell Young, pianist, with assisting artist, ConstanceKeene, piano. (Newport Classic CD 85513) The Music of Friedrich Nietzsche:...
Zenon Fishbein and Eugene List, and coached with Claude Frank and ConstanceKeene. Adolovni Acosta gave her New York debut in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie...
Artur Balsam and Eleanor Hancock, and solo pianists Bruce Hungerford, ConstanceKeene, Robert Goldsand, Lilian Kallir, and Zenon Fishbein. Isler holds Bachelor's...
Arts degree at the Manhattan School of Music where she studied with ConstanceKeene. In 1988 she was the winner of the National Endowment of the Arts Solo...
New York, where he studied under Jacob Lateiner, Solomon Mikowsky, ConstanceKeene, and Jonathan Feldman. So began touring China intensively in 2014,...
Taiwanese-American family in Florida in the 1990s, the series stars Randall Park, Constance Wu, Hudson Yang, Forrest Wheeler, Ian Chen, and Lucille Soong as the Huang...
in Keene, New Hampshire, Jonathan Myrick Daniels was the son of Phillip Brock Daniels, a physician and Congregationalist, and his wife Constance Weaver...
of the Huang family alongside his television parents Randall Park and Constance Wu. Wheeler appeared on the Hallmark Channel's Home and Family on March...
early photographic experimenter and friend of Richard Keene, an early Derby photographer. Keene became a close friend of William and his brother Charles...
Mengesha as Elijah Hanford Nicky Lawrence as Jocelyn Lisa Codrington as Constance Melanie Nicholls-King as Hazel Lacroix Kiawenti:io Tarbell as Ka'kwet...
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