Constance Keene, 84, Much-Recorded Concert Pianist, Teacher
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Constance Keene, who died December 24 at 84, was a concert pianist and recording artist known for her interpretations of Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Hummel, and other demanding composers. She was one of the outstanding Romantic pianists of the middle part of the 20th century, and one of the few female American keyboard artists to garner an international reputation.
Born in New York, Keene made her Manhattan debut at age 10, playing a program of Bach, Chopin, MacDowell, and Schumann at Chatliff Hall on 57th Street. By the time she was 13, Abram Chasins, a well-known composer and teacher had taken her under his wing. Chasins became music director at WQXR, and Keene first performed before a wider audience playing duos with Chasins on the radio on Saturday afternoons. The two later married and formed an extraordinary partnership. Chasins wrote books, juried international competitions, and helped found KUSC in California, while Keene taught, recorded, and concertized around the world.
In 1943, Keene was named winner of the annual Naumburg competition, and made her Town Hall review in November. Over the following two years, she performed at more than 100 USO camp shows and was presented with a government citation for “outstanding work in building morale.”
Beginning in 1945, Keene and Chasins performed as soloists with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Serge Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood. In 1947, the two – though not yet married – presented the maestro with a pair of vintage instruments, a cello and violin, which formed the nucleus of the Tanglewood Instrumental Collection.
Keene’s most sensational moment was in 1946, when she became the only woman ever to substitute for Vladimir Horowitz, at a recital series performing for an audience of 4,000.
The two pianists struck up a friendship, and the story goes that she once played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in E Flat Minor for Horowitz, who advised her to speed up the ending. When Keene pointed out that there was no such notation in the score, Horowitz whispered: “Good box office.”
Keene told her student, John Bell Young in an interview in Clavier magazine, “I’d have to be awfully stupid to visit his home three nights a week and not have something to show for it.”
Keene’s rendition of the Preludes became perhaps her most famous single recording. It prompted Arthur Rubinstein to comment, “I cannot imagine anybody, including Rachmaninoff himself, playing the Preludes so beautifully.”
While universally hailed for her musicianship, Keene was also a great beauty, and was mindful of her appearance and conduct during performances. Journalists turned to her for advice in articles on how to sit down gracefully – she suggested practicing sitting and standing up in front of a mirror until the motion appeared effortless. Fastidious and showy in her choice of gowns, she made sure to practice in full dress before going on tour so she knew whether she could “cross hands without popping seams, whether the strapless top is firmly anchored, and whether the waistband is too tight.” The conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos, under whom she performed with both the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra, was reputed to have remarked, “With those looks, you don’t need any talent.” Despite, or perhaps because of this, he remained her favorite conductor.
By the 1950s, Keene was regularly appearing with major symphony orchestras, and in 1954 was invited by the German government on a month long visit to meet German musicians and take in performances. She was impressed by the nation where, she wrote in a dispatch to the Times, “Music is the people’s ‘Brot,’ where the musician is esteemed as a contributor of a vital and unique commodity.” But she was also forthright enough to inform her hosts that the piano soloist at one famous orchestra “couldn’t survive the preliminaries of our major contests.”
“How could they respond so warmly to such a dreadful performance?” she asked her host.
“They weren’t applauding the pianist,” he responded. “They were applauding Mozart.”
Keene had a notable collaboration with Benny Goodman and toured with his orchestra in 1962, performing Gersh win’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” After a wildly popular concert with Yehudi Menuhin at the Gstaad Festival in Switzerland, the violinist invited her to play a memorial tribute for his sister in 1981.
Keene began teaching piano while still in her teens, and among her earliest students were Rubinstein’s children. In 1969, she took a position at the Manhattan School of Music, where she nourished generations of students as one of the most sought-after teachers of her generation. Her students included Peter Nero, Steven Mayer, and David Bar-Illan.
Keene often gave lessons at her Upper West Side apartment, dominated by two full-sized Steinway Grand pianos. Although she swore by the Steinway brand, she went through pianos quickly, and claimed to be the piano maker’s single best retail customer. “I’ve always been able to sell for a profit,” she once said. “It’s a better return than some mutual funds.”
Keene was named to the Manhattan School of Music’s board of trustees in 1997. She often served as a judge, including at the Van Cliburn and Naumburg competitions. She also continued teaching until illness slowed her down in recent months.
In 2004, the school honored her with a doctorate in musical arts, an award she found especially moving because, as she said, her only other higher degrees came from the “school of live performance.”
After Chasins died, in 1987, Keene married Milton Kean, a tax attorney to whom she was extremely devoted.
Constance Keene
Born February 9, 1921, in New York City; died December 24 at Lenox Hill Hospital of complications of pulmonary disease; she is survived by her husband, Milton Kean, and an adopted niece and nephew.