Constance Keene

Constance Keene was an American pianist, who was renowned for her 1964 recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Preludes and won critical acclaim for her recordings of the works of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Carl Maria von Weber and Felix Mendelssohn, as well as Rachmaninoff's Études-Tableaux, Op. 33 and Études-Tableaux, Op. 39. She was raised in Brooklyn, New York City. One of her teachers was Abram Chasins. She won the Naumburg Piano Competition in 1943. In 1946, she stood in for Vladimir Horowitz when he was unavailable for a concert, and she asserted that she was the only female pianist ever to have been given this honor. She also appeared with Benny Goodman and his orchestra in a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. In 1949 she married Chasins, who died in 1987. They performed and recorded music for piano duo. Through her husband, who had himself studied with pianist Josef Hofmann, she met other concert pianists, including Vladimir Horowitz. She and Chasins regularly socialized and played bridge with Horowitz and his wife Wanda Toscanini Horowitz during Horowitz's 12-year retirement from the concert stage. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constan...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)