Nadia Reisenberg Sherman (14 July 1904 – 10 June 1983) was an American pianist of Lithuanian birth.
Biography
Nadia Reisenberg was born in Vilnius to a Jewish family. Her parents were Aaron and Rachel Reisenberg. Her sister Anna (Newta) was born two years later, and Clara in 1911 who later took the married name of Clara Rockmore and became renowned for her virtuosity on the theremin. The three sisters remained extremely close. When Nadia was six, her uncle Paul sent the family a piano, and Nadia immediately knew she would be at the keyboard for the rest of her life. Her talent demanded that the family move to St. Petersburg for study at the conservatory, where the director, famed composer Alexander Glazunov, took a special interest in the gifted girl. She studied under Leonid Nikolayev at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.
Due to the upheavals of the October Revolution, Reisenberg and her family returned to Vilnius, then traveled to Warsaw and Germany. They finally settled in New York in 1922. She then pursued further studies with Josef Hofmann at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, from which she graduated with a degree in piano performance. She had a successful career as a concert pianist and taught piano on the faculties of several institutions, including the Curtis Institute, the Juilliard School, Queens College, and the Mannes College of Music.
Her son, Robert Sherman, taught courses on "The Business of Music" at Juilliard and previously wrote music criticism for The New York Times for four decades.
