Celebrated violinist and educator Earl Carlyss passed away in January at 86. The Chicago native made his debut at the age of 16 with the Pasadena Symphony and studied violin at the Paris Conservatoire for two years before graduating from Juilliard with two degrees. In 1966 he became the second violinist of the Juilliard Quartet, one of the more prolific performing and recording quartets of its era during his 20 year tenure.
In 1986, Carlyss became the first Sidney M. Friedberg Chair in Chamber Music at Peabody, where his wife, Ann Schein, was already a faculty member. The couple moved from New York to Baltimore and, over the next 15 years, he led the Chamber Music program, directed the Conservatory’s string ensembles (which at the time included the Quartet-in-Residence the American String Quartet), and performed.
Carlyss and Schein retired in 2001 to return to New York, with Carlyss telling The Johns Hopkins Peabody News at the time, “the wonderful thing about the music business is that we never say goodbye because, like family, we’re always crossing paths.”
Carlyss and Schein continued to teach at the Aspen Music Festival after retiring, and Schein returned to the Peabody faculty in 2022. Carlyss leaves behind a legacy as one of the most revered string quartet players and mentors of his era, whose artistic excellence was matched by his kindness.
Ann Schein Carlyss, a beloved and longtime Peabody faculty member and one of the foremost Frederic Chopin pianists of her generation, passed away in April.
Born in White Plains, New York, at age 2 Schein was adopted and raised by her father’s brother and his musical family. She started taking piano lessons under critic, conductor, and pianist Glenn Dillard Gunn and his wife Bessie Bracken at the age of 4, and both the Gunn and the Schein families moved to Washington, D.C., in 1945 when Gunn became the Washington Times-Herald’s critic.
Schein trained at Peabody with Polish pianist Mieczysław Munz before launching one of the more distinguished international solo careers of her era. She made her solo debut in 1957 in Mexico City, the same year she recorded her first album for Kapp Records, Chopin’s Second Concerto. She was 17 years old.
Schein recorded two more albums for Kapp, embarked on her first tour of Europe in 1959, and became the first American woman keyboard artist to tour Russia in 1961. In 1960, she recorded Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto and the Chopin F Minor Concerto in Vienna’s Grosse Saal of the Musikverein with the Vienna Staadtsoper Orchestra—a recording that convinced pianist Arthur Rubinstein to coach her.
She performed for President John F. Kennedy at the White House in 1963 and forged an impeccable solo concert career performing with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the Washington National Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the London Symphony, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, under such celebrated conductors as Seiji Ozawa, James dePreist, Stanislaw Skrowacewski, George Szell, and David Zinman.
Schein joined the Peabody faculty in 1980, was generous with her deep insight, wisdom, warmth, and musical expertise, and remained on faculty until 2001. Peabody honored Schein with a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012 and she returned to the faculty in 2022 as a revered piano performer and pedagogue. APR—Appian Publications & Recordings, the British label predominantly devoted to new and historic piano recordings—reissues Schein’s three Kapp Records albums as a three-CD box set in June.
Schein and Carlyss are survived by their daughters and granddaughters.