Eleanor Spencer (pianist)

Eleanor Spencer was born in Chicago. She studied piano there, was soon identified as a child musical prodigy,[1] and started performing at age 10.[2] At age 14 went to Europe to continue her musical education in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, studying with Harold Bauer and Theodor Leschetizky.[3][4]

Spencer gave her first professional recital in London at Bechstein Hall in 1910. In 1912, while living in Berlin with a Russian princess, she made news as a passenger in a "Wright machine" airplane in Germany with pilot Vsevolod Abramovich.[5]

She made her American professional debut at Carnegie Hall in 1913.[6] She lived in Berlin and Paris, and performed mostly in Europe until the beginning of World War II.[3] In August 1919, she was a soloist at the Kurhaus Concerts in Scheveningen, and was described as the first American musician to appear on Dutch concert programs after World War I.[7][8] She played at New York's Town Hall venue in 1930[9] and 1936.[10][11] She also taught piano.[12]

Her critical reception was generally positive.[13] Spencer was considered technically strong, and an expert on the works of Robert Schumann. She played at Aeolian Hall in 1919, displaying her "original taste and ample technique".[14] Of her 1930 performance at Carnegie Hall, the New York Times critic noted "a general effect of monotony in the lengthy movements of the Brahms and Schumann works", and cited a "prevailing lack of imagination" as the cause.[15]

By the time she moved back to the United States in the late 1930s, she was becoming deaf. She retrained herself as a deaf musician, and returned to a performing career after the war.[3] In 1946, she played again in New York, introduced by Edwine Behre.[16]

Spencer died in Locarno, Switzerland, in 1973 aged 81 years (her obituary in The New York Times gave her age as 84 years).[17] Her papers, including diaries, letters, and promotional materials, are in the New York Public Library.[3]