Musical Immigrants: How Two Pianists Found Success in America - Part I by Thomas Wolf
The house lights dim and the stage lights brighten. The crowd in the sold-out New York concert hall becomes quiet. On stage, two grand pianos face one another—otherwise, the stage is empty, quite a contrast to last night’s orchestral performance with a hundred instrumentalists and a chorus. But tonight, there will be just two performers.
Pierre Luboshutz & Genia Nemenoff’s formal portrait in concert attire by Bruno of Hollywood.
The stage door opens. Out walks a slim woman in an elegant full-length ivory colored gown followed by a handsome gentleman in white tie and tails. Holding hands and moving to a position in front of the pianos, the couple smiles, bowing slowly, acknowledging the applause. As they take their places at the two pianos, an audience member whispers to her friend sitting beside her, “That is what musical royalty looks like.” Neither she nor most others in the audience realize that not so long ago, this couple arrived in the United States with little money and few prospects.
Between 1900 and 1950, thousands of musicians like these two fled their homelands in Russia and in other countries in Eastern and Western Europe, ending up in the United States. Their reasons for leaving home 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. 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 better than they had hoped. Many 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.
What follows is the story of two of these musical immigrants—Pierre Luboshutz & Genia Nemenoff—who became, in their heyday, among the most famous duo-piano teams in the world. Their story —is similar in many ways to so many others—musicians who crossed the Atlantic Ocean and made a new life in the United States. I know their particular story well as Pierre and Genia happened to have been my great uncle and aunt.
Pierre Luboshutz’s mother—Katherine—who ran the family piano business in Odessa.
Antecedents
Pierre Luboshutz (1890–1971) and Genia Nemenoff (1905–1989) were, in many ways, very similar—musicians from Russian-Jewish backgrounds who left their homelands and found success in America. But there were important differences. For two generations, Pierre Luboshutz’s forebears had made a living—albeit a modest one—in the music business. Grandfather Luboshutz (actually Luboshitz in Russian) was a professional opera singer, Pierre’s father was a violin pedagogue. The family lived in Odessa where their main source of income was a modest business, run by Pierre’s mother Katherine, buying and selling pianos.
The Nemenoff Family in Paris circa 1908. Genia is on the left.
By way of contrast, though Genia Nemenoff’s parents were accomplished musicians—her father a singer, her mother a pianist—neither was a professional. And unlike the Luboshutz family, the Nemenoffs were well off financially. Their affluence came from the retail fur trade, through a business begun by Genia’s mother’s family, the Jacobs, who had emigrated from Russia to Germany before Genia was born. In time, when Genia’s father Aaron Nemenoff married into Marie’s family, he gave up any thought of a musical career and was given the sinecure of the Paris branch of the family fur business. Thus, while Pierre Luboshutz grew up poor in Odessa far from the international musical capitals of Russia (Moscow and Saint Petersburg), Genia Nemenoff’s childhood was spent in an affluent milieu in one of the great cultural cities in the world. In time, tragedy would strike both families. Pierre and Genia were lucky as they would depart in time to make a new successful life, eventually coming to America.
For both families and so many musical immigrants in America, anti-Semitism had significant consequences that shaped their lives. Russian laws established by Tsaritsa Catherine the Great (1729–1796) required that Jews live in what was called the “Pale of Settlement” (a large strip of land of which Odessa was a part). The only exceptions that allowed Jews to live in the great cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg were either acquiring great wealth or displaying exceptional talent. Thus, for the Luboshutz family, raising superstar musical children who might become rich and successful and reside anywhere in the Empire became a singular obsession. Pierre’s two older sisters fulfilled their parents’ dreams. Lea, the oldest, a violinist, and middle sister Anna, a cellist, paved the way for Pierre, the third child.
Anna Luboshutz (left), cellist, and Lea Luboshutz, violinist, both considered prodigies, paved the way for their brother Pierre at the Moscow Conservatory.
Both girls were prodigies who had brilliant careers at the Moscow Conservatory. Each won coveted gold medals and both were selected for the international touring circuit even before graduation, appearing with the likes of Chaliapin, Scriabin, Koussevitzky, and others. Their talent allowed them to stay in Moscow, far from the pogroms that were becoming regular events in Odessa for Jews. Thus, by the time Pierre Luboshutz arrived in Moscow to attend the Conservatory, he was considered part of a distinguished musical family. Had political events been different, the family might well have continued living together in Russia indefinitely.
For Genia’s family too, anti-Semitism shaped their lives well before she was born. While as wealthy merchants they were permitted to live in Saint Petersburg where Genia’s mother was born, constant harassment eventually drove them out of Russia and, in the case of Genia’s parents, on to France via Germany, both countries offering far more opportunities (and safety, at least initially) for Jews. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Pierre Luboshutz, like so many Russians, would follow that same path—first from Moscow to Berlin and then to Paris—where he would encounter Genia Nemenoff, teaching her in a masterclass at the Paris Conservatory.
Early Careers, Marriage, and Creating a Duo
Pierre Luboshutz, age 24, ten years before leaving Russia.
Pierre’s path to that fateful masterclass where he met Genia had been circuitous at best and not nearly as distinguished as that of his sisters. He had never been one to enjoy long hours of practice and the life of a bon vivant in Moscow cut into his musical studies and his later career development.
When Pierre received only a silver medal upon graduation from the Moscow Conservatory, his parents were displeased. And his career as a soloist proved short-lived. Rather, he became known primarily as an accompanist not only for distinguished musicians like his sisters as well as the double bass virtuoso Serge Koussevitzky, violinists Efrem Zimbalist and Paweł Kochański (Paul Kochanski) and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, among many others, but also for the American dancer Isadora Duncan. Her free-form dances to masterpieces of classical repertoire were so popular with Russian audiences that she was encouraged to establish a dance school in Moscow where Pierre also worked as an accompanist.
The Luboshutz Trio Lea, Pierre, and Anna became one of the most famous chamber groups in Russia. Had political events been different, all three would most likely have stayed in Russia where successful careers were assured.
But perhaps Pierre’s most important musical opportunity was provided by his more famous sisters through the eponymous Luboshutz Trio, a chamber group comprised of the three siblings that was among the most successful in Russia in the early teens of the twentieth century. On one tour alone, for example, the group played fifty cities during the winter months of 1913–1914 ending up with an important concert in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.
But if these professional experiences did not live up to the aspirations of Pierre’s parents, the nature of the intimate playing with one or two other musicians of superior gifts was perhaps the most valuable preparation Pierre received for what became his greatest later success as a musician—the duo-piano collaboration with his wife.
The piano duo of Luboshutz & Nemenoff, which would become among the most sought after in the world, was created almost by accident…and in America. Pierre and Genia continued to see one another in Paris where she was trying to make a career as a soloist. But Pierre was often away, touring in the United States in the 1920s, a land of great opportunity and lucrative fees. True, he was only an accompanist, but he was making a decent living and saving money when in Paris by living in an apartment with his sister Lea’s family. When Genia got her first big break—a tour in the United States in 1931—the two met up in New York, married three days after her arrival, and decided to make the United States their home.
America made sense from many points of view. Pierre’s sister Lea had recently decided to move her family (including their mother) to Philadelphia where she was now a faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music (her son and Pierre’s nephew, Boris Goldovsky, was a student there as well). It certainly looked as though the United States would be the new home for most of the members of the family who had fled Russia (some, like Pierre’s cellist sister Anna Luboshutz, had chosen to stay in the Soviet Union as her husband was a physician valued by the new regime). But more important, it seemed like America was the land of limitless possibilities. Pierre and Genia took an apartment in New York and began looking for work.
Pierre Luboshutz & Genia Nemenoff soon after settling in the United States.
Unfortunately, the United States in the 1930s was not what it had been in the 1920s. The world-wide Depression was taking its toll on the music business. Happily for Pierre, the super-stars with whom he was performing continued to secure bookings and provide him with a reasonable income. But for Genia, a little-known Parisian female pianist, her few opportunities were limited to some occasional teaching of mostly untalented pupils. After a full life with family in Paris and concerts throughout France, a New York apartment with long weeks without Pierre or anyone else close to her was lonely.
Genia’s letters to Pierre when he was on the road are heartbreaking to read and it was clear that America was not for her. In a letter of 4 March 1932, she writes of her horror about the kidnapping of the baby of the aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne that had occurred three days earlier—it was front page news and impossible to miss. “It’s incredible,” she wrote, adding tellingly, “Such a thing could only happen in America.” Genia had lived through a tumultuous era in Europe but she had been surrounded by a loving family and doting parents who protected her. She often found America hard to understand and downright scary at times and she had always been emotionally fragile. Pierre, with his outsize personality, optimism, and good humor was her new protector…when he was around. But being alone in the United States was not working for Genia. Obviously, something had to be done if the two of them were to stay.
And it was Pierre who came up with the idea. Initially, it was simply that the two of them should make music together when Pierre was home. They explored the four-hand and two-piano literature and Pierre even tried his hand at transcribing some favorite pieces. As their musical circle grew, they would invite friends for dinner with Genia’s superb cooking and perform together afterwards. At one of these gatherings, the impresario Sol Hurok, who had been sister Lea’s manager and had become a friend of the family, was in attendance. Pierre talked about how sad it was that there was so little opportunity for music lovers to hear performances of the wonderful musical literature that existed for two pianos—compositions by Bach (if you counted the harpsichord music) as well as by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, and many others. As they discussed it, Hurok mused that if Pierre and Genia were the ones performing this music, it could be an “attraction” that a good manager could sell.
This was America after all where almost anything was possible and where two pianists with authentic Russian names—a handsome married couple—would be catnip to the public. Except for a few major cities, classical music was a new and exotic art form for many Americans and most believed that it was Europeans who exemplified it. The idea of two pianos was also timely. There wasn’t much competition, Pierre and Genia could play repertoire that was rarely heard, and it could be supplemented by Pierre’s arrangements—popular works like De Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance,” Glinka’s “The Lark,” and melodies from Johann Strauss’s opera, Die Fledermaus. It was a relatively open niche. Why shouldn’t Pierre and Genia fill it?
It wouldn’t hurt that Pierre’s sister Lea had already scored many successes in America as a solo artist with orchestras and as a recital partner with the great pianist Josef Hofmann. Many of those who presented her might take a chance on Pierre and Genia. Then there was Koussevitzky, Pierre’s old recital partner. Once a double bass virtuoso, he was now Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He could certainly put in a good word with important presenters and even hire Pierre and Genia to solo with his orchestra in the future. Hurok thought they had a chance at a career and offered to get them started with a few concerts and a New York debut recital.
The rest, as they say, is history. A major career launched, as so many had been during this era, in the United States.
END OF PART I – TO BE CONTINUED
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 Luboshutz & Nemenoff repertoire lists and discography appeared in the Summer 2022 issue of Liner Notes Magazine. Many thanks to Gregor Benko, Scott Kessler, Ward Marston and Joe Moore.