November 21, 2023

Harold Victor Bauer (b. 1873, d. 1951): Bauer began his career as a violinist in England, but after studies with Ignacy Jan Paderewski began concertizing throughout Europe and established a home in Paris. In 1900, Bauer made his debut in America with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, performing the U.S. premiere of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor.  Bauer was introduced to a young pianist named Janet Daniels, who would go on to founder Manhattan School of Music, while she was traveling abroad around 1904. She played for him and he insisted that she stay in Paris for a period to study with him. In December 18, 1908, Bauer gave the world premiere performance of Claude Debussy’s piano suite Children’s Corner and later moved to New York where he founded the Beethoven Association. He often played chamber music with cellist Pablo Casals and violinists Rachmael Weinstock and Fritz Kreisler. Between 1915 and 1929 he recorded over 100 pieces for the Duo-Art and Ampico reproducing (player) pianos, one of the most prolific virtuoso pianists in this medium of his era. His recordings of Beethoven are particularly revered. Bauer was a life-long mentor to Janet Daniels Schenck and became a founding member of the School’s Artist Auxiliary Board in 1918. He gave special classes and taught privately on and off at MSM between concert tours until 1950. One of his star pupils was Dora Zaslavsky, who was one of the first graduates of the School.

Dora Zaslavsky Koch (b. 1904, d. 1987): [excerpted from the Encyclopedia of American Classical Pianists by Richard Masters] Brought to the United States as an infant from what is present-day Ukraine, Dora Zaslavsky was given piano lessons after showing significant interest in a toy piano brought home by her father. She studied for years with Janet Schenck at the Neighborhood Music School, which would eventually become known as the Manhattan School of Music. Zaslavsky was something of a poster-child for the settlement school movement, appearing in recitals intended to showcase the success of the settlement educational model. In 1924, she was selected to perform on a program celebrating the school’s first decade, playing the Grieg Concerto with the school orchestra. After graduating in 1924, Zaslavsky studied with Wilhelm Backhaus in Philadelphia and Paris, as well as with Harold Bauer and Carl Friedberg. Zaslavsky suffered from severe performance anxiety, and as a result never made a serious attempt to build a significant career as a performer. In 1926, Zaslavsky began teaching at the Manhattan School, and would ultimately serve on the faculty for sixty years. Her private and conservatory students included Abbey Simon, Thomas Richner, Samuel Dilworth-Leslie, David Bar-Illan, Joseph Seiger, Robert Hamilton, Joseph Joubert, Phillip Kawin, and others. Simon spoke fondly of her teaching, having come from previous teachers who focused almost entirely on the technical aspect of piano playing. “She was a great classicist, great in all sorts of music; Scarlatti, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. […] She was a marvelous teacher, something I had never had. David Saperton, Josef Hofmann, Leopold Godowsky, they all came from the same cloth. She made me play things I hadn’t played. I played several Haydn sonatas, masses of Mozart, which she disapproved of the way I played, she said ‘That’s great, you’re playing lovely Chopin mazurkas.’ It wasn’t changing my view, it was changing the way I performed it, it showed me that maybe that wasn’t the way.” Simon would later inscribe a photo to Zaslavsky with the words “To Dora: She knows all, sees all, hears all.” Zaslavsky made no recordings, but was immortalized in a different medium; she married the American painter John Koch in 1935 and appears in a number of his paintings including My Studio (1952) and Pink Poinsettia (1970). A coaching session with Abbey Simon is portrayed in Music (1956-1957).