Sonates pour Piano
Leipzig and Berlin: C. F. Peters, c. 1870.
Later printing. (429) pp., 7.75 x 10.75 inches. Full leather over boards, with marbled edges and gilt-stamped front cover. Wear and small losses to extremities, tear to front pastedown due to binding/gluing flaw, still essentially very good. Original photographic portrait of Frances Striegel Burke laid in (7 x 9 inches; one closed tear and a few mild corner creases, not affecting image). Item #4556
A copy of the complete sonatas of Beethoven (thirty-eight in total, including the additional six easy sonatas), in the “edition nouvelle, revue critiquement” issued in four cahiers (this being the combined version in a single volume), with distinguished provenance, having once belonged to Theodore Leschetizky (1830–1915), the acclaimed Polish pianist, teacher, and composer. Leschetizky presented this volume in the late 1890s to his student Frances Striegel Burke, who subsequently passed it on to her student Gertrude Lachner Havnaer, whose son and student James Havnaer was the ultimate recipient. Leschetizky was a student of Carl Czerny, one of Beethoven’s most notable pupils, thus the lineage of instruction extends directly back to the master himself.
Frances Striegel (1876–1933) was the daughter of pioneer residents of Harper, Iowa; after studies in Chicago and then Vienna (with Leschetizky), she returned to Iowa where in 1899 she married Judge Thomas Carrick Burke. In 1905, she moved with her husband to Baker, Oregon, where he had mining interests; she was a prominent music teacher there, and then from 1913 in Portland, where in 1926 she became the director of the Ellison-White Conservatory.
The portrait of Striegel Burke is affectionately inscribed (twice, on both front and back) to Gertrude Lachner. The inscription on the back reads in part, “my gifted & intelligent pupil, and my first graduate in the Ellison-White Conservatory,” and is dated June 8, 1928; the inscription on the front is dated in September of the same year. Lachner went on to assist Striegel Burke at the Conservatory, and composed many songs (all unpublished). In a slightly macabre finale, Striegel Burke collapsed and died at the end of a lecture on “Modern Music” given to Reed College students on February 7, 1933; the news item in the next day’s Oregonian mentions that Gertrude Lachner Havnaer was one of two people assisting in illustrating the lecture.
According to the “Special tips for date determination” section in the Edition Peters pages on the Petrucci Music Library website, C. F. Peters used the Leipzig and Berlin imprint from 1867 to 1880, and added the footnote mentioning the engraver, C. G. Röder, in the 1870s, which places this edition firmly in that decade; in all likelihood it was purchased by Leschetizky soon after it first appeared. There are occasional pencil annotations with fingerings and other interpretive notes, but whether those were made by Striegel Burke (memorializing Leschetizky’s instruction) or by one of the later owners is a matter for speculation.
Price: $250.00