(No portrait)

A. Oake  

Born: ?

2 Octave studies  (Donajowski)

Go to top    Back to index

(No portrait)

Lynn Freeman Olson  

Minneapolis, 1938 - New York, 18.11.1987

Olson studied at the MacPhail School of Music at the University of Minnesota and during his early career he composed for a radio show, It's Time for Music, The Captain Kangaroo and other CBS television productions. He also wrote many pieces for music students and co-author of college textbooks on keyboard playing.
During his short life-span Mr. Olson became one the most sought-after clinicians in music education and traveled to about thirty states presenting workshops and was a Life Member of the National Federation of Music Clubs. As well as contributing editor for Clavier Magazine he was on the board of directors of the New York Federation of Music Clubs and a member of the permanent teaching staff of the International Workshops and the Caribbean Cruise Workshop for Piano Teachers.

(Six pieces or arrangements): 1. Marine's Hymn, 2. Greensleeves, 3. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, 4. Serenade, 5. Londonderry air, 6. Entr'acte

Go to top    Back to index

(No portrait)

Arletta O'Hearn 

Born: ?

Among O'Hearn's works are piano duets and - for two pianos - Jazz Theme and Variations and Suite Talk.  

Hands Separately  (two pieces for each hand singly) (Kjos)

Go to top    Back to index

(No portrait)

Julia O'Neill 

Born: ? 

Musing  1932 (Wood)

Go to top    Back to index

(No portrait)

Preston Ware Orem   American author, pianist and composer

Philadelphia, 1865  - Philadelphia, 26.05.1938

He  was educated at the Eastburn Academy and the University of Pennsylvania where he received the degree of Mus. D. He studied organ and theory with Hugh Archibald Clarke (1839-1927) and piano with Charles H. Jarvis (1837-1895).
During the years from 1889 to 1895 he was organist at St. Paul's Procathedral in Los Angeles after which he returned to his home town to teach for one year at the Philadelphia Conservatory and from 1896 to 1905 he was a faculty member of the Combs Conservatory. From 1900 he began his association wit the Theodore Presser Company as critic and editor at the same time conducting the Presser Choral Society and from 1901 to 1910 he worked as organist again but now at the Walnut Street Presbytarian Church. 
Orem is remembered today for his Harmony Book for Beginners (1919) and 9 musical exercise books but among his concert pieces the American Indian Rhapsody is the most remarkable - and most far-out Indian with pyrotechnical trills, arpeggios, broken chords, and repeated thunderous - even savage octaves - enough to make Hollywood envious (he also orchestrated the Rhapsody). His interest in American Indian music was fairly casual and superficial but the Indian idea attracted him for its colour. Besides it was in fashion then and he even leaned on - not to say manipulated original Indian themes - recorded and suggested by Thurlow Lieurance (1878-1963), a composer who spent many years collecting Indian melodies.
Besides this he published a Romance for violin and orchestra and a ballet suite but among his other works are a piano quartet, a quintet, many songs, piano pieces, transcriptions and arrangements.

Sextet from Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor  1919 (Presser)

Go to top    Back to index

Léon Orthel   Dutch pianist and composer

Roosendaal, North Brabant, 04.10.1905 - Den Haag, 06.09.1985 

As a young man Orthel entered the Royal Conservatory in The Hague as pupil of Everhard van Beynum (piano), André Spoor (violin) and Johann Wagenaar (composition). Later with a grant from the Dutch government in 1928 he continued his studies for a year in Berlin at the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule für Musik with Paul Juon and Curt Sachs as teachers.
Already at that time his compositions had made such an impact that they were performed and broadcast in many countries.
In 1941 he returned to the Royal Conservatory in The Hague but now as teacher of piano at the same time touring as a concert pianist. All the time (since 1923) he had composed symphonies, a cello concerto, some smaller works for solo instrument and orchestra, chamber music, piano pieces and vocal works.

Sonatine nr. 5  1959 (Donemus)

Go to top    Back to index

Hans (Hendrik Willem) Osieck   Dutch pianist and composer

Amsterdam, 15.01.1910 - Bloemendaal, 22.06.2000 

Osieck studied the piano with Elisabeth Aghina and Piet Vincent in Holland and later on at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart with Walter Rehberg (1900-?) and Max Pauer where he took his exams as a piano soloist with cum laude in 1934 . He continued his studies in Paris from 1938 to 1940 with Yvonne Léfébure and returned to Paris after the Second World War for further studies and in 1949 to Germany.

	Yvonne Léfébure (1898 - 1986)

Osioeck gave many recitals and appeared often with the Hague Philharmonic with which he premiered his own piano converto. with other Dutch symphony orchestras, like the Residential Orchestra in the Hague and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
During the war he taught piano and did not give any performances due to his disapproval of the Kulturkammer (The Nazi Cultural Organization which dictated who and what should be performed or be performing according - not to any cultural  - but to political and racial principles) . From 1949 to 1951 he played several times in Germany with the Berliner Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. In 1951 he travelled to South Africa. In 1952 he came back to The Netherlands and settled in Eindhoven as a piano teacher.
He wrote several compositions for piano and orchestra (two piano concertos, one for two pianos and a Fantasy In een blauw geruite kie. Additionally, he wrote compositions for orchestra (Bevrijdingssuite 1943) as well as chamber music and the operetta Porceleinen Harten. Perhaps best known is Suite Concertante for 2 pianos and orchestra.

Tema con Variazione  1964 (Donemus)

(No portrait)

Lionel Ovenden  English pianist and composer

1894 - 1976

Ovenden is practically forgotten today if it were not for the fact that he was the dedicatee of one of Ketèlbey's early works: the valse-impromptu La Grazieuse. 

	Albert William Ketèlbey 1875 - 1959

This was a very early work and the dedication first appeared when the work was re-issued in the 1923. The first copy of it reached the British Museum in 1907 but it was probably composed and performed several years earlier. Judging from the Ketèlbey piece Ovenden must have been  an exceptional pianist. So was Ketèlbey which was not widely known since he took up composing.

Etude in D flat major  (written sometime after WW I)

(No portrait)

Go to top    Back to index