INCITE PROJECT the Reminiscences of Pamela Frank Columbia Center
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INCITE PROJECT The Reminiscences of Pamela Frank Columbia Center for Oral History Columbia University 2019 PREFACE The following oral history is the result of a recorded interview with Pamela Frank conducted by Gerry Albarelli on August 21, 2019. This interview is part of the INCITE Oral History Project. The reader is asked to bear in mind that s/he is reading a verbatim transcript of the spoken word, rather than written prose. ATC Session #1 Interviewee: Pamela Frank Location: New York City, NY Interviewer: Gerry Albarelli Date: August 21, 2019 Q: Okay, this is Gerry Albarelli interviewing Pamela Frank. Today is Wednesday, August twenty-first, and this interview is taking place in New York City. So, if you would, start by telling me where and when you were born, and a little bit about your early life. Frank: [00:00:37] I was born June 20, 1967, in New York City, New York Hospital, and I grew up in this very apartment building. My early life, well, my early life was fun. It included very entertaining parents who, seemed to play music for fun. I thought that that was their hobby, so, the apartment was filled with music all the time, with rehearsals, and practicing, which never seemed like practicing; but they were very European in the sense that my father used to always say, “If it weren’t for the war, you would have been brought up in Europe.” So, they jokingly said they didn’t want me to grow up American, so my first language was German, so I could speak with my grandparents; and then they put me in a French school for elementary to high school, which was an offset of the Lycée Français [de New York] called Fleming École Française, which doesn’t exist anymore. I was very interested in school and very interested in many, many things. I was being carted around to concerts all the time and was given a toy violin when I was three, sort of as a joke because everybody thought I’d be a pianist. I precociously or perhaps obnoxiously said, “It doesn’t play! I want a real one,” and they denied my request for two years. They made me beg Frank – Session 1 – 4 for a violin. They used to joke that “we discouraged her from being a musician.” That’s not exactly true. They encouraged me to be interested in many, many things, but obviously, the violin stuck, so I kept asking. They finally (probably to get me to shut up) gave me a real one when I was five. I started studying with Shirley Givens, who was an incredible violin teacher, especially for children, whic was only fun. I never was forced to practice, or had to practice. I chose to practice if I did. I went to this Fleming, and when it came time to leave that school, I chose to go to Dalton [School], which was an intense academic school, with the intention of going to Yale [University] or Harvard [University] or Princeton [University], to an Ivy League, because I was very interested in academics. I was already interested in psychology, but I also attended the Juilliard Pre-College on Saturday. I had been in the New York Youth Symphony, which still exists, and that was on Sundays. But to give you an idea of how my parents wanted me to have as normal a life as possible: When I said I wanted to go to Juilliard Pre-College, my mother said, “Well, your entire weekend cannot be wasted on music! You need to have a weekend day to just have fun.” I had to choose between the New York Youth Symphony and Juilliard, so I chose Juilliard, and that was fun because I got to be with other musicians where I was otherwise not. And, yes, I spent four years in high school, junior and senior year at Juilliard Pre-College, then came the time to decide whether to go to Yale or to Curtis [Institute of Music], because my teacher at the time, Szymon Goldberg, was teaching at both places. I almost went to Yale to study psychology and violin on the side, and then at the last minute I had this sort of yanking, tugging feeling that it would be hard to have enough hours to play the violin even for fun, so I Frank – Session 1 – 5 chose Curtis. But for the whole first year I really regretted it. I took every class that Curtis offered, because I was so afraid of becoming stupid, and it may have happened anyway [Laughs]! But I enjoyed my four years at Curtis, and then I continued to live in Philadelphia because it’s an extremely livable city: everything’s right there within ten walking blocks. The airport’s close and the train’s close, and it's a very, very easy, comfortable city to live in. So I lived there for another ten years after I went to school, but by then, I was playing concerts. I moved back to New York in 1996. Q: Okay. So that’s a good place to stop and for me to ask you to go back and tell me a little bit about the family history, and then stories about your mother and your father. Frank: [00:05:07] Okay. Family history. Well, as I mentioned before, my parents really played music for fun, and I never got the sense that that was their career. My father and I would play ear-training musical games from a very early age. He used to call it “the party trick,” where he would play a note, and I’d identify immediately whether it was a black key or a white key. He thought that was the most amazing thing that I was always right, and so he would do it for his friends, like I was like a circus act [Laughs]. But we always played ear-training games for fun, and we played music in the house also for fun. My parents had an incredible relationship because they were both such phenomenal musicians, who didn’t threaten each other. It was kind of amazing. They played a lot of the same repertoire, but they had so much respect for each other. They played together, and when they did, that was the most incredible example of Frank – Session 1 – 6 synchronicity I’ve ever seen, even though they were very different. To say that the ensemble was phenomenal is an understatement. They sort of had one brain, separated in two. It was beautiful to watch, and they never were competitive. So, there was always just a very positive, healthy vibe in the house, but my father was the real kid. They used to say that “we tried so long for one child, that one was enough, we didn’t want to have to go through that process for more.” But he was really my other sibling. I have memories of waiting for the school bus when I was five, and every morning he would take me down. He would draw hopscotch on the sidewalk with chalk, and we would play hopscotch for half an hour before the bus would come. And then I’d come home from school, and we’d play puppet show, or he’d be a student in my imaginary class [Laughter], in my room. So I was never lonely. I was not an only lonely child, by any means, and I never missed siblings at all. I really had a grown-up kid with me, all the time, sometimes to the horror of my mother, but mostly to her delight. Q: Okay, so tell me about how they got here, some of those stories, yes. Frank: [00:08:11] My father was from Nuremberg, and my mother was born in Prague but lived in Vienna from the age of five, and due to the circumstances of the war, obviously, they both had to flee. My father actually fled Nuremberg when he was twelve, went to Brussels briefly and then to Paris. He stayed there until they were forced to leave by the German occupation. They then walked across the Pyrenees to Spain where they lived illegally. He was overheard (word got Frank – Session 1 – 7 around) at the piano and invited to a party given by the Brazilian Ambassador. The American Consul happened to attend the party and offered him a visa to Brazil instead of a performance fee. But my dad asked for one to the US instead. So actually, playing the piano saved his life. It shaped his entire future. He then went to Lisbon and awaited passage to New York. Simultaneously, my mother was forced out by the Nazis as well. She went to Switzerland then to Portugal. Now this is the amazing part: while they were both waiting for a ship to the US at the same time, they were allowed to practice in the same piano store in Lisbon. She was five years younger. He remembers seeing her in that piano store! Then they met again in Tanglewood [music venue in Massachusetts] in 1947, when they were both students. My mother had lied about her age to get into the older program. They met because they were singing in chorus right next to each other on the first day. He liked to say that they had already met in Lisbon, because “Lillian was shown to me,” and they were predestined [Laughs] to be together My mother came to Flushing [Queens, New York City].