Lee Pattison

Lee Pattison (July 22, 1890, Grand Rapids, Wisconsin - December 22, 1966, Claremont, California) was a noted American pianist, composer, arranger, opera director, and teacher. From about 1919 until 1931 he was a member of the popular two-piano team of Guy Maier and Lee Pattison. Lee Pattison Recital Hall at Scripps College in Claremont, California, is named for him.

Lee (Marion) Pattison was born in Grand Rapids, Wisconsin, on July 22, 1890. His father, Joseph Marion Pattison, was a public school teacher, and his mother, Mary Alice McVicker, a private music teacher. While he was still a boy, his family moved to Iowa. He studied piano and composition at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where his principal piano teacher was Carl Baermann (1839–1913), a friend and pupil of Franz Liszt. Following graduation in 1910, he became a member of the New England faculty. Pattison met Guy Maier, who was then a student at the New England Conservatory. Following Maier’s graduation in 1913, Maier and Pattison left together for Europe, where they hoped to become pupils of Harold Bauer (1873–1951), Josef Hofmann (1876–1957), or Arthur Schnabel (1882–1951), all eminent pianists of the time. They found that Bauer was away and Hofmann took no pupils, but Schnabel was willing to teach them. So they went to Berlin, where Schnabel coached them for about a year. Maier and Pattison returned to Boston in 1914.

After Maier and Pattison heard a two-piano performance by Harold Bauer (1873–1951) and Ossip Gabrilowitsch (1878–1936), they began to play together. When the United States entered World War I, Pattison joined the infantry, and Maier volunteered for the entertainment service of the YMCA. In France, the two gave recitals for American troops. After the armistice, they gave a recital in Paris that was attended by President Woodrow Wilson and French Premier Georges Clemenceau. Playing classic works from the two-piano repertory in addition to their own arrangements of the works of great composers, Maier and Pattison traveled widely through the United States and Europe during the 1920s. In 1922, they joined Leopold Godowsky (1870–1938) in the final number of a concert in Carnegie Hall, where they played Godowsky’s three-piano contrapuntal paraphrase of Carl Maria von Weber’s Invitation to the Dance. Godowsky dedicated the work to Maier and Pattison. In 1928, they gave the Carnegie Hall premiere of Mozart’s Andante and Variations, K. 501, a work composed in 1786 but never before played in the New York hall. As their reputation grew, they became known as “The Piano Twins.” In 1931, they announced a “friendly split” and embarked on a farewell tour of the United States. Time magazine said they were “as difficult to disscociate as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, liver & bacon or the Cherry Sisters.” Both were “excellent musicians,” Time said, but Maier was “the better showman. . . . Pattison’s contribution is just as important but he makes it more quietly, focuses more on his piano.”

...
Wikipedia