Eleanor Sokoloff (1914-2020) by Thomas Wolf
On July 12, 2020, the music world lost an icon—Eleanor Sokoloff—at the age of 106. Mrs. Sokoloff taught piano at the Curtis Institute of Music for over 80 years with countless students who went on to international careers. She and her husband Vladimir met there as students, and spent their entire professional lives at Curtis. This special blog post includes more about this remarkable lady.
When Eleanor Sokoloff took on yet another crop of talented students as she approached her eighties, people were amazed. They were even more amazed when she continued to do so into her nineties. But no one could have imagined that at the age of 105, she would still be turning out prize-winning students. One of those students many years ago was my late brother, Andrew Wolf, so I had a chance to observe what it meant to study with Eleanor Sokoloff. Scales, arpeggios, basic finger exercises—it did not matter how advanced you thought you were when you started with her—you did the drill. And she would check that you had been practicing them when you came to lessons. As she used to joke, “You wouldn’t want a plumber to come to your house with no tools. It is the same with pianists. They need the tools.”
But unlike many teachers who concentrate on basic technique often to the exclusion of more expansive pedagogy that focuses on musicality, Eleanor Sokoloff was a consummate artist who taught young people the infinite variety of musical expression. Her specialty was working with very young players—no one had her gift for building their capability and musical personalities at a tender age. But she had little patience with students who were not willing to work, and work hard…and they knew it. My brother regularly practiced four to five hours a day. But wisely, Mrs. Sokoloff believed you could practice too much. She counselled my brother not to go beyond five hours. “When you do too much, you lose concentration and end up wasting your time,” she explained. “Besides, you have to learn about life. That is part of being a great artist. You can’t sit at the piano all day.”
Eleanor Sokoloff mothered two distinguished daughters—both of whom worked in the music field. But in a sense she mothered hundreds of others, not only her students who she befriended for life but many others of us. When I spoke to her on her 106th birthday just a few weeks before she died, she was anxious to catch up on the lives of many of our joint acquaintances, on my family, and on the news of the world. Her curiosity, interests, humor, and her friendships kept her perennially young.
How to capture what was special about Eleanor Sokoloff? First, read this affectionate obituary by her friend, Peter Dobrin, which you can find here. Dobrin had been visiting Mrs. Sokoloff in 2019 at her summer house in Maine just after the death of Naomi Graffman, the widow of pianist Gary Graffman.
“Peter,” she said, “that was such a wonderful obituary you wrote about Naomi. How did you get all that information so quickly?”
Peter answered, “Well, we work on these well before, as we know that when the person dies, we need to be ready.”
Mrs. Sokoloff thought for a moment, smiled sheepishly, and asked, “Have you started working on one for me?”
Peter answered “Yes, about 25 years ago!”
After reading this wonderful article, take time to watch a film that was made about Mrs. Sokoloff to celebrate her 100th birthday which you can see here.
What wonderful testaments to a great lady!