VERA IVANOVNA MAURINA-PRESS (NÉE MAURINA; MOSCOW, MARCH 9 (21), 1876 – NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 15, 1969)
She was born into a family of lawyers. From the age of five, she studied piano with her mother, a student of Nikolai Rubinstein. She graduated from the Moscow Conservatory (1895) in the class of Pavel Pabst, and was friends with Alexander Scriabin from her student years. After that, she perfected her skills in Berlin under the guidance of Ferruccio Busoni and Emil Sauer, and carried her passion for the music of Scriabin and Busoni throughout her life.
Since 1900, she has given concerts in Russia (in particular, giving a solo concert on November 28 as part of the program of the Moscow branch of the Imperial Russian Musical Society).
She married violinist Mikhail Press, and from 1905 she performed in a piano trio with her husband and his brother, cellist Joseph Press. At the turn of the 1900s and 1910s, the trio performed mainly in Germany and other European countries under the name Russian Trio. In those same pre-war years, Vera Maurina was a Berlin correspondent for the Russian Musical Newspaper.
With the outbreak of World War I, the Presses returned to Russia, but after the revolution they lived again in Germany. Vera Maurina-Press switched primarily to teaching. In 1934-1937 she lived and worked in Brazil, and then settled in the United States, where among her students was the young Morton Feldman , who recalled: “she, without being overly demanding, instilled in me a living musicality rather than musical skill”. Feldman dedicated the play “Madame Press Died Last Week at the Age of 90” to the memory of his mentor.
TRACKLIST
601 RACHMANINOFF – “7 Salon Pieces”, Op. 10, No. 3, g Barcarolle
602 RACHMANINOFF – “Fantasy Pieces”, Op. 3, No. 5, b-b Sérénade
604 ALIABIEV-LISZT – The Nightingale, Op. 32, No. 1
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