Vienna, 1981 – 1986, New York
Margaret Steuermann was an Austrian-born pianist, teacher, and advocate of modern music, closely associated with the circle of Arnold Schönberg and the Second Viennese School. She was the sister of the pianist and composer Eduard Steuermann, one of Schönberg’s most important interpreters. Raised in an intellectually and musically cultivated Jewish family in Vienna, she received a thorough musical education and became closely involved in the progressive musical life of the city before the First World War.
Following the rise of National Socialism, Steuermann emigrated to the United States, where she settled in New York and established herself as a highly respected piano teacher. Although she did not pursue a public concert career on the scale of her brother’s, she exerted considerable influence through her pedagogy, particularly in the interpretation of modernist repertoire. She was closely connected to émigré circles of European musicians and intellectuals and played an important role in transmitting the performance traditions of the Viennese modernist school to younger generations in America. Her legacy endures primarily through her students and her contribution to preserving and disseminating the musical culture of pre-war Vienna in exile.
