Ruth Schönthal

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Ruth Esther Hadassah Schonthal (June 27, 1924 in Hamburg, Germany – July 10, 2006 in Scarsdale, New York, United States) was a pianist and composer. Ruth Schonthal was born in Hamburg of Viennese parents. At the age of five she began composing and became the youngest student ever accepted at the Stern'sche Konservatorium in Berlin. In 1935, Schonthal and her family were forced to leave Nazi Germany for Stockholm on account of her Jewish heritage. She later studied at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in Stockholm, where at the age of fourteen, she had her first sonatina published. At the RAM she studied composition with Ingemar Liljefors and piano with Olaf Wibergh. Then, she was once again forced to flee as a result of the rising political tension, and eventually traveled to a variety of places: first the USSR, then Japan, and then Mexico City, where at the age of 19 she gave a very widely acclaimed piano performance of her own compositions, including her First Piano Concerto, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Among the audience members was the noted German composer Paul Hindemith, who obtained a scholarship for her to study with him at Yale in 1946. She was one of the few of Hindemith's students to graduate from the Conservatory with honors.[citation needed] In 1950, Schonthal married the painter Paul Bernhard Seckel (b. 1918) and settled in New York City, eventually moving to New Rochelle, where she lived for most of her life.[1] One of her three sons is Al Seckel, an autho

top songs

albums

Jewish String Quartets

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Margaret Astrup Sings Ruth Schonthal

Schonthal, R.: Piano Music

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Piano Recital: Mills, Margaret - Schontal, R. / Liebermann, L.

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Meditations and Overtones

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Sonata breve for piano - M. Mills (piano)

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x 2012

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Set No Limits: Music by Women Composers for Clarinet & Piano

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Fragments from a Woman's Diary: X. Children at Play

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