Olga Samaroff
| Olga Samaroff | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Lucy Mary Olga Agnes Hickenlooper |
| Born |
August 8, 1880 San Antonio, Texas |
| Died | May 17, 1948 (aged 67) New York |
| Genres | Classical music |
| Instruments | Piano |
Olga Samaroff (August 8, 1880 – May 17, 1948) was a pianist, music critic, and teacher. Her second husband was conductor Leopold Stokowski.
Samaroff was born Lucy Mary Olga Agnes Hickenlooper in San Antonio, Texas, and grew up in Galveston, where her family owned a business later wiped out in the 1900 Galveston hurricane. After her talent for the piano was discovered, she was sent to Europe to study, since at that time there were no great piano teachers in the United States. She first studied with Antoine François Marmontel at the Conservatoire de Paris and later with Ernst Jedliczka in Berlin. While in Berlin, she was very briefly married to Russian engineer Boris Loutzky.
After her divorce from Loutzky and the disaster which claimed her family's business, she returned to the United States and tried to carve out a career as a pianist. However, she soon discovered she was hampered both by her awkward name and her American origins. Her agent suggested a professional name change, which was taken from a remote relative.
As Olga Samaroff, she self-produced her New York debut at Carnegie Hall in 1905 (the first woman ever to do so). She hired the hall, the orchestra, and conductor Walter Damrosch, and made an overwhelming impression with her performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. She played extensively in the United States and Europe thereafter.
Samaroff discovered Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) when he was church organist at St. Bartholemew's in New York and later conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 under Stokowski's direction when he made his official conducting debut in Paris with the Colonne Orchestra on May 12, 1909.
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