Carroll Glenn – Eugene List – Leonard Bernstein – Sonata – State Departmet/Voice Of America Transcription – circa 1946. – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Historic Americana this weekend. The celebrated Husband-and-wife duo of Carroll Glenn, violin and Eugene List, piano in a performace of Leonard Bernstein’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, recorded by The Voice Of America around 1946.
Carroll Glenn won the Naumburg Violin Competition in April 1938 and, as part of her prize, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation sponsored her post-Juilliard New York debut recital at the Town Hall on November 7, 1938.
She debuted with the New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodziński on December 14, 1941, performing the Sibelius Violin Concerto, with critical success. During her 1942–1943 season, Glenn was featured in 21 orchestral concerts throughout North America.
She married pianist Eugene List in 1943, and they concertized together in 1946, when the U.S. State Department sponsored their first European tour.
Glenn and List were strongly interested in offbeat, rarely performed, and contemporary music, including the double concertos of Giovanni Battista Viotti and Anis Fuleihan, and the Duo Sonata by Franz Liszt, which they rediscovered. Glenn gave the premiere of Andrew Imbrie’s Violin Concerto (which she later recorded) and revived Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata for two violins.
By 1961, Glenn had made over 90 appearances as soloist with major symphony orchestras, an all-time record for a soloist of her years.
She died in 1983 in New York, aged 64.
At the age of sixteen, Eugene List’s official concert career began in December 1934 at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music.
In 1943, he married violinist, Carroll Glenn, in New York, whom he had met at Juilliard. Like her husband, Glenn was a prodigy. She had already won the prestigious Naumburg Competition, which gave her a New York debut and helped to launch her illustrious career. List was soon assigned to the Special Services, a post he had wanted since his enlistment. In 1945, he was sent overseas along with other enlisted entertainers, including violinist Stuart Canin. Later, both Canin and List were ordered to Potsdam, Germany where they were told to play for the President and his staff at the Potsdam Conference. Soon they learned the occasion was to play for President Harry S. Truman, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, including their large entourage at the Big Three conference. List soon became known as the “Pianist of the Presidents” or “The Potsdam Pianist.” List would perform many more times at the White House, the last in 1980 for President and Mrs. Carter.
One of Bernstein’s earliest works, the Sonata for Violin and Piano was composed while he was a student at the Curtis Institute and premiered in 1940.
Enjoy.
