Leo Grigoryevich Sirota (May 4, 1885 – February 25, 1965) was a Russian, Austrian, Japanese, and American pianist, teacher, and conductor. A child prodigy, he toured across Russia and came to the attention of Ignacy Jan Paderewski. After graduating from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, with a letter of recommendation from Alexander Glazunov to Ferruccio Busoni, he emigrated to Austria-Hungary.
Settling in Vienna, Sirota was celebrated by the city's society. He also became one of Busoni's favorite pupils and was later treated by him as a colleague. World War I disrupted his international career. He met and befriended Jascha Horenstein during this period, eventually marrying his sister. After the war, his career resumed, and was acclaimed across Europe.
After his second tour of the Soviet Union in 1928, Sirota ended up in Manchuria, from where he was persuaded to perform a tour in the Empire of Japan. The enthusiasm of the Japanese public and press was so immense, that Sirota decided to move to Tokyo with his family in 1930. He joined the faculty of the Tokyo Music School and became the crucial figure in the development of piano playing in Japan. After the start of the Pacific War, he was discriminated against by Japanese society and was repeatedly scrutinized by the Tokkō. In 1944, he was evacuated with other foreign citizens to Karuizawa, where they spent the duration of the war under harsh circumstances.
He returned to musical life after the war, emigrating to the United States, which became his final home. After briefly living in New York City, he accepted the role as head of the piano department at the St. Louis Institute of Music, and settled with his wife in the suburb of Clayton. In late 1963, Sirota returned to Japan for what became his final performances there; the trip was widely reported on in the Japanese press. He died in New York City in 1965.
Biography Youth Sources conflict on where Sirota was born in the Russian Empire. According to his students Joan Kelley Arison and Alexis Abaza, Sirota was born in Kamenets-Podolsky, Podolia Governorate. His daughter, Beate, said he was born in Kiev, Kiev Governorate. (Both birthplace locations are today part of Ukraine.) Sirota was the fourth of five children born to a middle-class Jewish family; his father owned a clothing store. Sirota's siblings were all musically inclined, including his two brothers; Wiktor became a conductor of operettas, Pyotr a music agent and promoter.
Sirota began studying piano at age 5 with a pianist who was boarding with his family, Michael Wexler. Sirota's pianistic skill developed rapidly. Administrators at his school regularly called upon him to play for visiting dignitaries. In 1893, Sirota performed his public debut recital. That same year he enrolled at the Imperial Music School of Kiev; Sergei Tarnowsky was among his classmates.
At the age of 10 Sirota embarked upon his first Russian tour, during which he played for Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Impressed by his talent, he invited Sirota to study with him in Paris, but his mother declined the offer, believing that her son was too young to study in another country. The following year, Sirota began to teach piano. After graduation, he enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The school's dean, Alexander Glazunov, wrote a recommendation letter for him to Ferruccio Busoni in Vienna.
In 1899, Sirota was appointed a répétiteur for the Kiev Civic Opera, where he also accompanied visiting singers in recitals, including Feodor Chaliapin.
The rise of anti-Semitic violence in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century convinced Sirota to consider emigration. His brothers had already emigrated to Warsaw and Paris. Sirota emigrated to Vienna in 1904.
Vienna and studies with Busoni
Sirota's talent, personality, and appearance helped him quickly gain acceptance into Viennese musical society of the time, which opened professional and social connections for him. Women were particularly drawn to him; one admirer bequeathed to him an apartment. At first he refrained from using his letter of recommendation to Busoni, choosing instead to first audition for Paderewski, Josef Hofmann and Leopold Godowsky. He auditioned for Busoni after and chose him as a teacher. When Sirota presented his letter of recommendation from Glazunov, Busoni replied, "What need is there for this? I have heard you play!" While studying with Busoni, Sirota also enrolled as a philosophy student at the University of Vienna using the name Leiba Girshovich.
In 1905, Sirota entered the Anton Rubinstein Competition in Paris, but failed to win a prize. His fellow contestants were Otto Klemperer, Béla Bartók, Leonid Kreutzer, and Wilhelm Backhaus; the last two winning fourth and first prizes respectively. Sirota decided not to return to live in Russia after the competition and, instead, settle in Vienna.
Busoni regarded Sirota as one of his best students. He dedicated a copy of his Elegies to him after hearing him perform Franz Liszt's Réminiscences de Don Juan. "After that masterful piece of playing, I don't wish to hear anyone else today", he told Sirota. Sirota was proud that Busoni had referred to him as a "colleague" in the inscription. Busoni later also dedicated his Giga, Bolero e Variazione: Studie nach Mozart to Sirota.
In 1910, Sirota won Busoni's permission to perform the Viennese premiere of his Piano Concerto at a concert with the Tonkünstler Orchestra. Sirota later recalled his anticipation for he concert he regarded as his "true debut":
I intended to make my debut in Vienna by playing in a concert with a famous contemporary conductor. Busoni was the finest of conductors as well as my former teacher and he was popular throughout Europe. That was why I persuaded him to come to Vienna. I wrote to him in haste and asked him to allow me to play his Piano Concerto, which had not yet been played in Vienna [...] Busoni wrote me back very promptly and made all the necessary arrangements. He also revealed to me ideas he had been thinking over. That was in September and the concert was held in [December]. I practiced this piece eight hours a day six days a week and I took the stage with no rehearsal.
The concert took place at the Great Hall of the Musikverein on December 13 and was conducted by Busoni. Arnold Schoenberg was among those who were in attendance. The performance was a public and critical success. Busoni predicted a great future for his pupil. A local music critic wrote:
A fresh, young, and extraordinarily talented pianist, Leo Sirota paid tribute to his teacher Ferrucio Busoni [...] [W]e were extremely impressed by the keen insight and instruction methods of Busoni as a teacher. Sirota is a serious artist. He has awesome technique, a soft key touch, unbelievably sustained [phrasing], and great affection for the musical works he played. [...] The tumultuous applause seemed to be directed towards Sirota the pianist rather than Busoni the composer/conductor [...]
Sirota's success at the concert was also reported on internationally. Ethel Burket, a correspondent for the Nebraska State Journal, wrote about the reception that met Sirota's performance of Busoni's "perfectly stupendous" concerto:
At the end such a pandemonium broke forth and the whole audience seemed carried away to the point of madness. Such clapping, yelling, and stamping I have never heard. Finally the lights were turned out and after many minutes the crowd began to disperse.
Sirota later said of Busoni:
Busoni didn't mention technical issues: he left such things in his student's hands. Nor did he compel them to employ special practice methods for particular composers, encouraging them to become musically mature through their own experience. He gave them very brief advice with new approaches to various styles and interpretations.
Sirota also praised Busoni's generosity with gifted students with limited financial means, whom he would teach without charge.
1910 Anton Rubinstein Competition
Later in 1910, Sirota returned to Russia to participate in the Anton Rubinstein Competition, which was being held in St. Petersburg that year. There was controversy ahead of the event because of a Russian law prohibiting people of Jewish descent from staying more than 24 hours in St. Petersburg. Despite a petition from local musicians headed by Glazunov, the government refused to rescind the law. Exceptions were made for those who, like Sirota, had earned the title of "Free Artist" upon completion of their studies in Russia.
Along with Sirota, participating pianists included Lev Pouishnoff, Edwin Fischer, Alfred Hoehn, and Arthur Rubinstein; the latter recalled in his memoirs:
After Fischer, I heard Sirota, [Pouishnoff], and an Englishman. They depressed me—they played too well. All [of them] had the kind of technical polish which I never possessed. And they never missed a note, the devils.
Hoehn was awarded the first prize; Sirota did not place among the winners. His friendship with Arthur Rubinstein, which began at the competition, endured for the rest of their lives.
World War I Although as a Russian citizen Sirota was exempt from service in the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces, his career was still disrupted when World War I began in July 1914. He was permitted to perform in public during the war, despite being the citizen of an enemy nation.
During the war Sirota met Jascha Horenstein, a fellow immigrant from Kiev who was also a student at the University of Vienna. Horenstein began to study with Sirota, whom he invited to play with the pickup orchestra he organized on Sundays. The two became lifelong friends. Horenstein invited his 23-year-old sister Augustine, known informally as Gisa, to hear Sirota play at a forthcoming concert. She was so moved by Sirota's performance and appearance that she forgot to applaud. Afterwards she was introduced to him by her brother. She began to study piano with Sirota. Their relationship developed into an affair, during which he proposed marriage to her; she refused as she was married with a son.
European success
The end of the war in 1918 had significant personal consequences for Sirota. Although he identified strongly with Russia and its culture, he was disappointed by the outcome of the October Revolution and felt that he no longer had a homeland to return to. He was also unhappy with the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in Austria. In spite of these and other postwar difficulties, Sirota made a successful return to an international performing career. He also made use of his experience as a répétiteur and facility with modern music during summer 1919, when Lotte Lehmann asked him to help her prepare the role of the Dyer's Wife in Richard Strauss' new opera Die Frau ohne Schatten:
I was the Dyer's Wife and found her an enthralling task. [...] I tried to study it by myself, but was glad when Leo Sirota, the pianist, took pity on me and sacrificed many hours of his holiday to coaching me in the extraordinarily difficult part of which Strauss himself had said jokingly to me that he scarcely believed it would be learned.
Throughout these years Sirota maintained intermittent contact with Gisa Horenstein, who still refused to divorce her then husband. Busoni interceded and spoke to her, speaking very favorably of Sirota's personal qualities. She finally agreed to a divorce, leaving her son in the custody of her husband. In 1920, Sirota and Gisa were married. "You're married to a great artist", Busoni told her after the wedding ceremony. "Please take good care of him." In 1923, their only daughter Beate Sirota Gordon was born. By the end of the 1920s, the Sirotas had become naturalized Austrian citizens.