While the press goes on about the Oscars and Bradley Cooper's twelve nominations for his movie about Leonard Bernstein, the first American conductor of any note, I looked at this series of interviews of Antonia Brisco, the first major woman conductor. She talks about her struggles to get to conduct at all, her forming an all-woman orchestra to get the job done, her encounters with Stokowski an studying under Albert Schweiter, and ends with what I call a Sophie Tucker medley; unlike my great-aunt Esther, she played it on the piano instead of the accordion. Although she was trained on the piano, she claims her instrument is the orchestra.
Review of Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman
