Lillian Fuchs (1902-1995)
Complete Music for Unaccompanied Viola

 

Born on 18 November 1902, Lillian Fuchs began her musical life as a pianist. Her parents, Kate and Philip Fuchs, were music-lovers and it seems that her father, a self-taught amateur violinist, taught local children the violin. Inspired by their example, her elder brother, Harry, took up the cello, to become a long-time member of the Cleveland Orchestra, and her brother Joseph turned to the violin, becoming a well-known violinist and a teacher at the Juilliard School. Lillian, who served as accompanist to her brother Joseph, wanted to learn the violin and studied with Louis Svecenski and Franz Kneisel at the New York Institute of Musical Art, now the Juilliard School, taking composition lessons with Percy Goetschius and graduating with awards in composition and in the violin.

Lillian Fuchs made her début in 1926 as a violinist, but soon afterwards began playing the viola, becoming a membe