Ethel Leginska

[3] After an unsuccessful custody fight for her son Cedric,[6] Leginska became even more outspoken about inadequate opportunities for women,[6] stating that self-sacrifice for family's sake is "over-rated" and that "it is impossible for a woman with a career to be unselfish".

[12] From her official American debut in New York's Aeolian Hall on 20 January 1913,[6] Leginska's popularity in the U.S. was growing, aided by both the careful staging of her performances, with well-thought-out lighting and decor to focus on the performer, and her distinctive style of dressing (favoring menswear) eagerly copied by her young fans, as well as her diminutive size and her youthful appearance that not only made the musical youth more likely to relate to her, but often misled not only her audiences but even the reviewers who would express their astonishment that a person so "young" displayed such skill as hers (this going on all the way into Leginska's late thirties, as made evident in the Detroit News critic Robert Kelly's description of her perform at 37).

[15] In the late 1930s, when her conducting opportunities began to diminish as her novelty wore off, she left the U.S. again to teach piano in London and Paris, before settling in 1939 in Los Angeles.

[16][17] In a book by Harriette Brower, Piano Mastery: Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers published in 1915, the following is said about Leginska: "I believe in absolute freedom in all parts of the arm, shoulder to fingertips.

[19] The scope of the concerts were such that by the end of the second year of the series, the two books of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier as well as all of Beethoven's sonatas and variations had been performed by the young musicians.

[19] The concerts were a great success, receiving accolades from world celebrities such as Bruno Walter, Arthur Rubinstein, and Serge Koussevitsky, and became a fixture of the musical life in Los Angeles.

In addition to her concert career, Leginska took courses in harmony with Rubin Goldmark from 1914,[6] and lessons in composition with Ernest Bloch in New York from the summer of 1918 on.

The first work performed in public, which was something rare for a woman at the time, was a string quartet inspired by four texts by the Indian poet Tagore,[6] which won a composition prize in the Berkshire Chamber Music Festival Competition.

[6] The three movement From a Life for chamber ensemble caused some controversy at its premiere (Aeolian Hall, New York, 9 January 1922) for its "ultra-modern" idiom.

[21] In 1957 she gave the premiere of her opera The Rose and the Ring, based on William Makepeace Thackeray's story of the same name, in Los Angeles, 25 years after its composition.