She studied piano there, was soon identified as a child musical prodigy,[1] and started performing at age 10.

[2] At age 14 she went to Europe to continue her musical education in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, studying with Harold Bauer and Theodor Leschetizky.

In 1912, while living in Berlin with a Russian princess, she made news as a passenger in a "Wright machine" airplane in Germany with pilot Vsevolod Abramovich.

[6] She lived in Berlin and Paris, and performed mostly in Europe until the beginning of World War II.

[14] Of her 1930 performance at Carnegie Hall, the New York Times critic noted "a general effect of monotony in the lengthy movements of the Brahms and Schumann works", and cited a "prevailing lack of imagination" as the cause.