Beveridge Webster

Beveridge Webster (May 13, 1908, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – June 30, 1999, in Hanover, New Hampshire) was an American pianist and educator.

Biography

Beveridge Webster initially studied with his father (also named Beveridge), who was director of the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Music.[1] In 1921, his father became business manager of the American Conservatory in Fontainbleau, moving his family to Paris. Beveridge and his siblings thus began five years of musical study in Europe, first at the American Academy at Fontainebleau as a pupil of Robert Casadesus and Nadia Boulanger,[1] then at the Paris Conservatory with Isidor Philipp. In 1926 he won first prize at the Paris Conservatory's piano competition.[2] He returned annually to the American Academy through 1934.[3] He also studied in Berlin with Artur Schnabel.[4]

He made his New York debut in November 1934 with the New York Philharmonic performing Edward MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2.[4] In 1937, he gave the New York Philharmonic premiere (on short notice, replacing Dushkin) of Stravinsky's Capriccio, under Stravinsky's baton.[5]

Webster was best known as an interpreter of French composers, especially Maurice Ravel (who he met in Paris as a student) and Claude Debussy. He premiered an early version of Ravel's Tzigane in 1924, and in 1975 he celebrated Ravel's centenary by performing the complete Ravel piano solo oeuvre at Juilliard.[6] In 1968, over a three-concert series at The Town Hall, he commemorated the 50th anniversary of Debussy's death with the first complete survey of the composer's piano works in New York.[4]

A Time magazine article from 1937 said of Webster, "Dark, well-knit, young Beveridge Webster is a good swimmer, takes pride in his tennis, likes to play poker or bridge with his great good friend Igor Stravinsky. He boasts of the little slam he once made against Sidney Lenz."[1]

In 1937, novelist Willa Cather, who likely personally knew Webster[7], attended one of his recitals at New York’s Town Hall, and wrote him a brief letter praising his performance, "That was the third time I had heard you play the Schumann, and this week I thought there was a kind of larger freedom in your treatment and a careless care in shooting the rapids (a queer figure of speech, but if you’ve ever seen the Canadian canoe men shoot rapids, you will know that I mean something (not velocity) which I am unable to say in technical musical language)."[8]

He taught at New England Conservatory from 1940 to 1946 and at the Juilliard School from 1946 to 1990.[4] His students include Michel Block, Robert McDonald, Jahja Ling, Sylvia Glickman, Steven Graff, Toshi Ichiyanagi[9], and Hao Huang. Seymour Bernstein related in his autobiography that by 1966 Webster had become a disengaged teacher.[10]

He made a substantial series of recordings issued on LP by Dover Publications and at least one, billed as the first installment in a complete traversal of Schubert's piano sonatas, for MGM Records, released as E3711.

Webster is associated with premiere performances, dedications, and first recordings of many contemporary works, including:

As an editor, Webster created editions of the music of:

  • Chabrier's Pièces pittoresques, which consisted little more than adding fingerings to reproductions of original Enoch-Costallat prints.
  • Dover's 2nd edition from 1975 of Claude Debussy: Piano Music (1888-1905), which corrected many engraving errors from the Dover reprinting of earlier Fromont editions.[17]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Maestro & Prodigy". Time. January 25, 1937. Archived from the original on December 22, 2010. Retrieved June 26, 2008.
  2. ^ The Pacific Coast Musician. Colby and Pryibil. 1926. p. 6.
  3. ^ Rosenstiel, Léonie (1998). Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 164. ISBN 978-0-393-31713-8.
  4. ^ a b c d Kozinn, Allan (July 7, 1999). "Beveridge Webster, a Pianist And a Longtime Teacher, 91". The New York Times.
  5. ^ Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (Program notes to New York Philharmonic concert).
  6. ^ Kozinn, Allan (July 7, 1999). "Beveridge Webster, a Pianist And a Longtime Teacher, 91". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 30, 2023.
  7. ^ Studies, Cather (January 1, 2020). Cather Studies, Volume 12: Willa Cather and the Arts. U of Nebraska Press. p. 86. ISBN 978-1-4962-1764-6.
  8. ^ "Cather's Evolving Ear: Music Reheard in the Late Fiction". Cather Studies, Vol. 12, P68-88. University of Nebraska Press. 2020.
  9. ^ Galliano, Luciana (2006). "Toshi Ichiyanagi, Japanese Composer and "Fluxus"". Perspectives of New Music. 44 (2): 250–261. ISSN 0031-6016.
  10. ^ Bernstein, Seymour (2002). Monsters and Angels: Surviving a Career in Music. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-634-07837-8.
  11. ^ Tobin, R. James (July 2, 2014). Neoclassical Music in America: Voices of Clarity and Restraint. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-8108-8440-3.
  12. ^ Kraehenbuehl, David (1963). "Review of Six Preludes, Op. 6; Visit to Israel (Dix feuillets de voyage); Suite for Piano; A Week of Birthdays; Seven Short Piano Pieces; Miniaturen, 1959; Drei Burlesken, 1952, Karl Schäfer; Suite pour piano, Op. 11; Imágenes infantiles (Childhood Images), Op. 13 a & b; Do You Remember the Last Silence? Op. 152". Notes. 20 (4): 582–583. doi:10.2307/895641. ISSN 0027-4380.
  13. ^ "Five Bagatelles : For Piano (1993)". Theodore Front Musical Literature. Retrieved February 12, 2026.
  14. ^ "Billy Jim Layton Collection | Special Collections and University Archives". www.stonybrook.edu. Retrieved February 12, 2026.
  15. ^ "Black, Robert (Carlisle) | American Music at Pitt". americanmusic.library.pitt.edu. Retrieved February 12, 2026.
  16. ^ "Music in Canada" (PDF). The Music Scene (244): 11. November–December 1968.
  17. ^ DeVoto, Mark (2010). "Review of The Art of French Piano Music: Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Chabrier". Notes. 66 (4): 789–791. ISSN 0027-4380.
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