Leonard Shure

Leonard Shure (1910–1995) was an American pianist and music educator. He started performing at the age of five and spent his teenage years in Germany, taking private lessons from Artur Schnabel. Leonard graduated from the Hochschule Für Musik, Berlin in 1927. After returning to the United States in 1933, Shure made his first concert appearance in New York with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and conductor Serge Koussevitzky. Leonard had been collaborating extensively with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of George Szell and appeared as a featured soloist with almost every major symphonic ensemble in the country, including The New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, and The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. In 1941, Leonard Shure became the first pianist to play at the Berkshire Music Festival in Tanglewood with BSO and Koussevitzky. He also performed the complete Beethoven sonata cycle with violinist Henri Temianka at The Library Of Congress in 1946. In the late seventies, the pianist toured the Soviet Union successfully. Shure taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music, University Of Texas, Austin, Boston University, The Mannes College Of Music, and New England Conservatory of Music. He gave the first ever applied music courses at Harvard University in 1966 and 1967.