Ruth Geiger

The NYPR Archive Collections | Jan 1, 2000

This is the 313th Victory Concert from the Music Room of the New York Public Library at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. The concert opens with Ruth Geiger playing the Italian Concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach followed by the Suite for the Piano by Claude Debussy in three movements.

Ruth Geiger was born on January 30, 1923, in Vienna, Austria. She came to the United States, 1938. She received her diploma from the Juilliard School Music in 1944 and studied with Joseph Lhevinne, A year before she graduated from Juilliard she was awarded the Walter W. Naumburg Musical Foundation prize. Olin Downes writing in The New York Times said of her competition recital that she played perceptively and with fine sincerity and enthusiasm which showed the breadth of her tastes and her curiosity about music. Geiger died in 2016 at the age of 93.

Geiger performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Canada receiving high praise from audiences and critics alike. She appeared as a soloist with such orchestras as the New Philharmonia of London, the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, and the English Chamber Orchestra. She regularly recorded for the BBC and other radio orchestras, including the Scottish BBC Orchestra. Geiger also recorded the complete Schubert sonatas for Radio Basel and performed in a live broadcast for the distinguished BBC recital series at St. John's Smith Square in London.


WNYC archives id: 42578

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