Skip to main content
top-photo-piano
top-photo-ann
top-photo-piano

1950 Washington D.C. - 11 yrs old

Glenn Dillard Gunn, Washington Times-Herald, 1950

“Of Ann Schein’s recital played at Barker Hall under the auspices of the Y.W.C.A. it is difficult to write. For she is a precocious child of 11, phenomenally talented, and with a personality matured far beyond her years. So also is her pianistic resource, which proved entirely adequate for Bach-Busoni, Scarlatti, Beethoven (G Major Rondo and Ecosaisses) Chopin (Preludes, Etude F minor, and Chopin-Liszt) and for the atmospheric tone-pictures of Ravel and Debussy.

“Young Ann has a spontaneous gift of address, an intuitive grasp of style and content and, most unusual, a feeling for the modern atmospheric uses of the pedal. She played the music of the impressionists not only upon the keyboard but with liberated and blended sounds of the piano.

“These arts of touch extended not merely to songful Chopin or delicately brilliant Scarlatti, but to the impalpable softness of Ravel’s “Sad Birds” which is a test of all the tonal controls.

“She was heard by a capacity audience that quite overwhelmed her with applause and demanded encores.”

Review Categories