Musical Immigrants: How Luboshutz and Nemenoff Found Success in America - Part II by Thomas Wolf
The date is Thursday, October 15, 1936. The concert season in New York is in high gear. Yesterday, internationally acclaimed violinist Jascha Heifetz performed at Carnegie Hall. Equally famous violinist Fritz Kreisler will follow on Saturday. But our story is taking place not in a great United States’ musical capital, but seven hundred miles west of New York in South Bend, Indiana where the population has just topped 100,000. The concert season here is quite modest by comparison and the musicians who will appear tonight are not superstars. Indeed, this will be their first concert together and few have heard of them. What no one in the audience realizes, however, is that a decade hence, the names of these performers will be widely known. Venues in large cities will present them, their photographs will appear regularly in the musical press, and their annual New York recital will be a popular event. Immigrants from Europe, these musicians would bet on America to make their careers, and America would respond more fortuitously than even they might have hoped.
Immigrants arriving from Europe at Ellis Island. Many were musicians who found success in America.
This is the second of two blogs about musical immigrants in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. It is a profile of Pierre Luboshutz and Genia Nemenoff, a married couple who exemplify the remarkable opportunities that the United States afforded so many people who were born elsewhere, became American citizens, and later became famous. I know their story well as they were my great aunt and uncle. While unique in some ways, their story is similar to that of so many other musicians who fled their homelands, came to America with practically nothing, and in a short time found success.
Their reasons for leaving their homes in Russia and other countries in Eastern and Western Europe were many—war, revolution, pogroms, famine, religious persecution. Some came for more personal reasons – family unification, marriage, or simple ambition. America, they believed, was the land of limitless possibility…and often they turned out to be right. They had seen others go before them and prosper. Now it was their turn. Remarkably, in most cases, the search for a better life for so many of these musical immigrants worked out well. Some became famous. Others, while not becoming musical luminaries, made a good living through their music, had families, and enjoyed freedom from persecution for the first time in their lives. Among the many musicians, a disproportionate number were Jewish.
Part I of our story (which can be found here) described the events leading up to the arrival of Pierre Luboshutz and Genia Nemenoff in the United States, their subsequent marriage, the hardships they encountered trying to make individual careers during the early days of the Great Depression, and the series of events that led them to South Bend, Indiana in the fall of 1936 to launch a successful joint musical career. Admittedly, they had advantages. Pierre’s sister Lea had begun concertizing in the United States some years earlier and was well-known by many music presenters. Her contact list was impressive. Her manager, Sol Hurok, the preeminent agent in the country for classical musicians, agreed, provisionally, to manage Pierre and Genia, to see whether their kind of music and artistry would catch on. And in the 1930s, many Americans, starved for authentic culture, believed that it was people like Pierre Luboshutz and Genia Nemenoff, with their foreign sounding names and pedigrees, who could provide it.
Nevertheless, the difficulties they faced were many in the 1930s. The world-wide Depression had hit the United States hard and concerts were not so easy to come by. There was much competition. Other musicians had come to this country and had made names for themselves earlier. Those more famous musicians were the ones likely to be booked in the major cities that offered higher fees and were home to important critics who could make or break careers. Our two musicians knew they would have to start modestly, cobbling together bookings in small towns that, if successful, might eventually lead to the big time.
Luboshutz & Nemenoff in their New York apartment at about the time they launched their joint career in 1936.
THE DUO-PIANO TEAM OF LUBOSHUTZ & NEMENOFF
The duo-piano team of Luboshutz & Nemenoff had been the brainchild of Pierre Luboshutz, in part as a way to help his wife secure concert dates. Pierre himself had made a modest career in America as an accompanist of well-established soloists who he knew from the old country. But his wife, though a fine pianist, could not find work. The impresario Sol Hurok, a fellow Russian, told Pierre he felt that the “gimmick” of an attractive husband-wife duo-piano team with authentic Russian names might just be something he could sell.
Pierre, Genia, and their management team had decided that their first concert should be out of the limelight in a place where a program could be tested with a live audience without prominent critics around. Thus, on 15 October 1936, the concert was arranged in South Bend, Indiana. It was a resounding success and, on the basis of the response, Hurok was willing to promote a New York debut on 18 January 1937. Waiting breathlessly for the newspapers the next day, Luboshutz & Nemenoff received the desired quote from the New York Times that could land directly in their publicity material (“Duo art of a high order”). A subsequent New York Times review a couple of years later by Noel Strauss read, “This reviewer has never before known two-piano artistry comparable to this.” And so it replaced the 1937 review in their publicity materials. Like so many others who had come to this country with very little—step by step, Pierre and Genia were building their reputations.
Luboshutz & Nemenoff returning from first tour (photo in Musical Courier, 1937).
Hurok’s promise of concert dates was no idle prediction. It turned out that “Luboshutz & Nemenoff” was an immediately popular attraction. During that first season (an abbreviated one of less than three months), the two pianists played twenty-four concerts and the Musical Courier captured them returning after the tour.
Reviews were uniformly positive and Hurok continued to book them throughout the United States. Indeed, during the next three seasons Pierre and Genia appeared 198 times, including their promised prestigious first appearance with Serge Koussevitzky and his Boston Symphony Orchestra. It seemed appropriate that the man who had given Pierre his first solo concerto appearance in 1915 in Russia should provide Luboshutz & Nemenoff one of their first big breaks in America. Other major orchestra music directors liked the novelty of exotic duo-piano soloists and began to book Pierre and Genia regularly. The team was especially popular with the Philadelphia Orchestra, with which they played a remarkable number of concerts, given the limited repertoire. In time, they were playing as many as 100 concerts a year, including tours of Europe, Central and South America, and South Africa.
THE PIANO CHALLENGE
While the United States offered myriad opportunities, it also had its challenges. Classical music in the hinterlands was a relatively new phenomenon and the couple could not depend on finding venues on the road, especially in relatively small communities, that could easily provide two matched grand pianos. Once again, they received a break – this time from an American company. The Baldwin Piano Company was willing to guarantee two grand pianos at any venue that booked Luboshutz & Nemenoff in the United States so long as the team would become exclusive Baldwin artists. In time, the Baldwin company would also provide six pianos for their personal use, instruments that were replaced every five years. Three pianos went to their large New York apartment and another three went to Pierre and Genia’s summer residence (“Twin Keys”) that they purchased in Rockport, Maine once they started to earn good fees. Having multiple pianos would allow Pierre and Genia to practice separately in the morning in different locations and then rehearse together on two pianos later in the day without having to leave home. Some of those pianos still reside in the homes of Pierre and Genia’s grand nephews and nieces.
Beautiful Playing, Wonderful Reviews
Luboshutz & Nemenoff practicing in their New York apartment.
Besides the quality of their playing, another reason for the success of Luboshutz & Nemenoff was that they received consistently positive press and excellent reviews at a time when such things mattered far more than they do today. Indeed, at the time they started out, reviews were important to establishing a career and almost every city of reasonable size and an aspiration for “culture” had a dedicated music critic who wrote for the local paper. The gold standard in the United States was an enthusiastic review from the New York Times, and Pierre and Genia considered themselves fortunate in getting several strong ones. After a while, it seemed they were getting ecstatic reviews everywhere, like this one after a concert in Atlanta on 22 January 1941 that was quoted in their promotional material: “It is a rare occasion when an entire audience almost goes wild with enthusiastic appreciation of a concert, but that is what happened last night. There seemed to be not a single soul that did not enjoy every minute of a concert that was packed with artistic thrills.
Pierre and the management team were also careful in the early days of the Luboshutz & Nemenoff career to garner quoted comments from distinguished musicians, which were placed prominently in their publicity materials. “Perfection in Two Piano Playing,” Serge Koussevitzky was quoted as saying at a time when he was considered one of the reigning maestros.
Arrangements and New Work
One of many transcriptions by Pierre Luboshutz that both enhanced the concert repertoire for two pianos and were popular with amateurs.
Success in America relied on repeat performances and there was no way that Pierre and Genia could go back repeatedly to communities unless they had fresh repertoire. But there were simply not enough original pieces for two pianos to do so. Ever resourceful, Pierre worked on musical arrangements and wrote a few original compositions as well like the song “In Springtime” based on a poem by Aleksey Tolstoy. These not only gave the team more music to play but it enhanced the Pierre Luboshutz brand among the large group of amateur musicians who made up the concert ticket-buying public.
Other composers also arranged and wrote pieces for Luboshutz & Nemenoff, including a suite from the ballet “On Stage” by Norman Dello Joio, and new concertos for two pianos and orchestra, one by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů, and another by Vittorio Giannini. The premiere of the Martinů by Pierre and Genia with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra on 5 November 1943 was considered important enough to be mentioned in the 8 November 1943 issue of Time magazine. Unusual for a new composition, it was so well received (reviewer Linton Martin, in the November 6, 1943 issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer, called the premiere “a super event of the symphony season”) that conductor Eugene Ormandy invited them back to Philadelphia to play it again with the orchestra five years later.
Hard Work
Of all the factors contributing to their success, perhaps the most important was that Pierre and Genia, like so many immigrants throughout history, were willing to work very, very hard. Genia probably deserved most of the credit. Pierre had never been a hard worker and without Genia, he probably would have been satisfied with a career that depended on others for the heavy lifting, those whose fame was already established. Though Pierre still didn’t practice long hours, both he and Genia rehearsed constantly, learning new repertoire and refining their ensemble playing. Pierre also spent considerable time on his arrangements while Genia wrote thank you notes and shopped for gifts to send to presenters large and small.
One can also see evidence of their work ethic in the touring itineraries that they maintained for years. Touring was not easy in those days but Pierre and Genia seemed willing to go anywhere at any time. They had no children, which helped, but it is rather astonishing to realize just how many concerts they played each year—two hundred concerts in the first three seasons and upwards of a hundred a year thereafter. This was a large number in an age before air travel was common and when summer festival bookings were few. At the same time, they were constantly learning and memorizing new repertoire (unlike other piano duos, they played everything by memory). As an example, while other major soloists might carry a single new concerto in their repertoire in a season, Pierre and Genia carried two. Just two days after they premiered the Martinů concerto in Philadelphia, they again appeared with the orchestra playing another relatively new piece, a concerto by Harl McDonald composed in 1937.
The artists in repose – piano duo Pierre Luboshutz & Genia Nemenoff enjoying some well-deserved rest and relaxation during summers in Maine.
High profile events were frequent. There was the annual recital in New York and regular appearances with the top orchestras in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia (including an incredible nine appearances with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in the 1943–1944 season alone). But the bread and butter of their income came from concerts in countless smaller communities. They seemed to live on trains. Only in the summer would Pierre and Genia relax in Maine where they and other members of the family owned property. Except for the occasional concert at Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony or at the Robin Hood Dell with the Philadelphia Orchestra, they rested in summer.
Retirement
In 1960, Pierre turned seventy and already there was some slippage in his playing and a few signs of memory problems. Most likely it was the early stages of the Parkinson’s disease that eventually led to his death just over a decade later. The grueling concertizing would have to be moderated. But what to do? Like so many musicians, especially those who came to the United States and earned more money than they could ever have imagined, Pierre and Genia had not saved and planned for retirement. They had led a more-than-comfortable life with a summer estate, lavish entertaining, gift giving, and many other luxuries. Consulting with their nephew Boris Goldovsky, who was well connected in the music business, Pierre and Genia agreed to head the piano department at Michigan State University in East Lansing while reducing the concert load.
The five-year appointment at the university lasted from the fall of 1962 through the spring of 1968 and it was not a happy one. For one thing, it was not as prestigious as a possible conservatory position might have been (they had taught briefly at the New England Conservatory), but this was not about prestige, it was about income and conservatories paid far less. University jobs like this one compensated their professors reasonably well and there was the possibility of vesting in a state pension plan if they stayed long enough. Predictably, Pierre and Genia, who had lived in cities like Paris and New York and had a wide circle of European friends, were not happy there—Pierre quipped that winters were colder than Siberia. Their students, for the most part, were not especially gifted and being far away from family for the first time was disorienting. After the initial appointment, they returned to New York, in part because Pierre’s illness had become worse. His death came in 1971.
Gravestone of Pierre Luboshutz & Genia Nemenoff in Seaview Cemetery, Rockport, Maine.
Genia, who was almost fifteen years younger than Pierre, lived on for almost two decades alone in New York. She had lived, loved, and worked with one man for most of her adult life and now he was gone. They had had no children. Genia had lost both her parents in the Holocaust in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, something that continued to haunt her into old age as she often wondered if she could have done more to save them. There were few living relatives on the Jacob/Nemenoff side of the family and in any case, they lived abroad. Being financially dependent on Pierre’s relatives only exacerbated her unhappiness. In time she sold the house in Maine and became quite aloof and isolated. It was a sad end for someone who had been beloved by so many people for her great gifts and her generosity of spirit. Upon her death in 1989, she was buried next to Pierre in the Seaview Cemetery in Rockport, Maine.
Recordings and a Legacy
Composers leave behind a body of work that contributes to their legacy. But performers create work in the moment and then it is gone. Except for recordings and perhaps their students, they leave little in the way of a tangible legacy. Thus, imperfect as they may be as a substitute for live performances, recordings are what we rely on in order to connect to those performers who are no longer with us. As the passion for historical recordings has increased and the technology to produce them has improved, we can get a little closer to those whose work was so treasured during their lifetimes.
RCA Victor Red Seal Record ad – music lovers could now listen to great artists in your own home.
Early on, Pierre recognized the importance of recordings in enhancing careers in a way that many immigrants, uncomfortable with the technology, did not. In the US, it seemed that everyone purchased records and classical musicians benefitted handsomely. Today, given the complete collapse of the classical recording business, it is sometimes difficult to remember that recordings were not only hugely important in popularizing classical performers but also produced substantial income for those artists who made them. Pierre and Genia recorded frequently under various labels. By 1943, they were recording for RCA Victor, which often took out large ads for their records in programs and magazines. A double-page RCA spread in a 13 and 15 July 1947, Tanglewood program features photos of Pierre and Genia along with Koussevitzky as RCA recording artists. These ads were still appearing more than a decade later. Another full-page ad in a Philadelphia Orchestra program from 25 and 26 March 1949, featured their photo and a list of four of their RCA Victor records above a photo of Eugene Ormandy with a list of some of his recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra. They and their recordings were keeping good company.
But there was an important reason why their records were popular. RCA Victor got it right: for the first time, you could hear great artists like Luboshutz & Nemenoff at your leisure in your own home. This opportunity, that today we take for granted, introduced many new fans to classical music and changed the listening habits of those who were already experienced concert-goers.
All this Pierre and Genia knew. But one thing that they probably did not think much about at the time was that their recordings would be their single most enduring memorial for subsequent generations. Today, few people know the names Pierre Luboshutz and Genia Nemenoff and even fewer have heard the recordings. Happily, Marston Records recently chose to remaster and reissue the Luboshutz & Nemenoff recordings and contribute to their wonderful musical legacy.
NOTE: This blog was adapted from liner notes prepared for a four-CD set of reissued recordings of Luboshutz & Nemenoff recently released by Marston Records.
A more expanded version of the article with complete repertoire lists and discography appeared in the Summer 2022 issue of Liner Notes Magazine. Many thanks to Gregor Benko, Scott Kesler, Ward Marston and Joe Moore.