I have been a musician all my life. I grew up about 40 miles north of New York City, in a community of radicals and free thinkers, and began playing the piano when I could climb up on the piano bench (age three or so). I was first taught by my mother, then by various teachers. Gifted with perfect pitch and a quick memory, I advanced quite rapidly. I was fortunate to have parents who loved and listened to classical music, bought records, and encouraged me. Listening to music was an important part of our household routine; I grew up with the NBC Symphony and the New York Philharmonic broadcasts being sacred weekly listening events in our home life. Each birthday family members bought me the record sets I asked for (Toscanini and Schnabel my favorites) and I soon accumulated a sizable collection.

I went through a rather turbulent teen-age rebellion, and gave up formal music training in favor of trying to save the post-WW II world through political action. I went to the University of Chicago (accompanied by my complete 78-rpm record collection and phonograph) and was a thorough rabble-rouser—but never stopped playing, no matter how badly, and found that my dorm mates actually liked to hear me, technique near oblivion, fake my way through Bach Preludes and Fugues, Chopin waltzes, and Mozart and Beethoven sonatas.

But all the while I was getting an extraordinary classical education at Chicago (based on Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins’ plan of developing critical thinking through reading of the Great Books), I was yearning for music and the piano, and finally returned home to New York to study piano seriously while completing a bachelor’s degree at Columbia, majoring in English literature. I married a cellist, and discovered the joys of playing chamber music. During his early jobs with the St. Louis and Pittsburgh symphonies, I was employed as orchestra pianist.

After returning to New York in 1962, where my husband joined the Met Opera Orchestra and we raised two sons, I began graduate school, and earned a PhD in musicology. In 1977, when Fanfare was born, I started writing reviews, discovered I enjoyed it, and have been doing it ever since. At the same time, I started teaching music history at Hunter College, retiring in 2006.

Late blooming paid off thrillingly, when my doctoral research brought me to (then) Czechoslovakia. I met Josef Suk, and a few years later recorded sonatas with him for Koch International, and Mozart piano concertos with the Suk Chamber Orchestra.

It has been my great good fortune to be involved in music in a broad way—performing, listening, recording, teaching, and writing. Each area reflects on and stimulates the others. As audio technology has advanced and one can hardly find a quibble with the sound of a new recording, and where performance values have become homogenized and many new young performers brilliant but faceless, my emphasis as a reviewer is on the content of music, and the ability of performers—old and new—to project it to the listener.