Ann Schein Carlyss (born on November 10, 1939, in White Plains, New York, United States) was born to a violinist mother and an attorney father. She is a Master Teacher and Concert Pianist who has performed with many conductors, including George Szell, James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and Sir Colin Davis. She has also performed with many orchestras worldwide, including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the London Philharmonic, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Schein currently resides in New York with her husband Earl Carlyss, who was a member of the famed Juilliard String Quartet, and is currently a faculty member at the Juilliard School of Music. They have two daughters.
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She spent her early years in Evanston, Illinois, but she moved to Washington D.C. when she was 4. At age 5, she began her piano training with Glenn and Bessie Gunn. She went on to study at the Peabody Conservatory under the direction of Mieczyslaw Munz. In 1959, at age 19, her first recording (of Chopin's Scherzi) established her as a premiere pianist. In 1961, she began lessons with Arthur Rubinstein. The next year, she performed a solo debut at Carnegie Hall, followed by a performance at the White House in 1963 for President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy.
In 1980, Ann Schein presented an entire season of the major Chopin repertoire in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, going through the entire Chopin cycle. From 1980 until 2000, when she retired, Ann was a member of the piano faculty at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. She has been an Artist-Faculty member of the Aspen Music Festival and School since 1984 and is a sought-after adjudicator in major international music competitions. During the summer of 2005, she opened the series of the complete Beethoven Sonatas performed by members of the piano faculty. The Washington International Piano Competition has established an award in Schein's and her mother's name.
Her first recordings were made for Kapp Records, with an album entitled "Miss Ann Schein: A truly brilliant pianist". Other albums included the Chopin Scherzi and an album of etudes.
Her recording of solo piano works of Schumann was released in 2001 on the Ivory Classics label. A new recording of the Chopin Preludes and the B minor Sonata was released by MSR Classics in 2005.
"In the 1960's the American pianist Ann Schein had a big success with Rachmaninov's Third Concerto. Davidsbündlertänze and Humoresque have been part of Schein's repertoire since the early days of her career - indeed she played the former at her Carnegie Hall debut in 1962. Schumann's popular Arabesque is performed fluently, the coda beautifully contemplative. Recorded at Spencerville Church in Maryland, the sound is resonant and full." International Piano Quarterly - Summer 2001
"Schein has made the Romantic literature the centerpiece of her repertoire, hardly surprising considering her teachers, Mieczyslaw Munz at the Curtis Institute, Arthur Rubinstein, and Dame Myra Hess. She has lived with these major Schumann works long and intimately, and it shows in her performances as well as in her descriptive notes. With fluent keyboard technique at her disposal, Schein invests these works with poetic imagination and romantic flair. Her readings tend to be straightforward and without exaggeration, but sensitive and subtly nuanced. The recorded sound is close and vivid, adding to the enjoyment of this disc." Fanfare Magazine - July/August 2001