Irene’s mother Edith Jacoby was born in Lötzen, East Prussia (now Gizycko, Poland) to well-appointed family of Jewish origin. As completely assimilated Germans, their daughters were christened Lutheran. Edith married Fritz Ascher in 1912 but was widowed in 1917 when Fritz died serving in WWI, leaving her with a 2-year old son Ernst. Edith’s older brother Bruno was by then married to Fritz Ascher’s sister Grete; all remained close until their deaths. The youngest sister Hilde was particularly close to Edith – coming to help take care of baby Irene in Vienna, and emigrating just several months after Edith and Irene, joining them in San Francisco.
In 1928 Edith married the 10 years younger Viennese mathematician Otto Schreier, already well known for his work. In spite of having received his doctorate from the University of Vienna, he was not appointed to a position there because of deep-rooted antisemitism, and a full quota of Jewish professors having been filled. However, he was invited to the University of Hamburg where he and Edith met through their mutual piano teacher, pianist Moriz Violin. Otto, a gifted pianist, was as passionate about music as was Edith. Tragically, he was taken ill and died less than a month before their daughter was born. Grief stricken, Edith moved to Vienna for the birth: to be near Otto’s parents (whom she referred to as “parents” in all her correspondence) and to settle in the city she had loved by associating it with the music closest to her since childhood: Mozart, Schubert, Johann Strauss!
Most of Irene’s earliest memories involve her beloved grandfather, architect Theodor Schreier. Grandmother Annie (born Turnau) was herself an artistic and cultured woman who sadly suffered many illnesses, and never recovered emotionally from losing her 28-year-old son.
Irene showed early musical talent, excelling at the piano. Her teacher was the same Moriz Violin who had brought her parents together – he had himself returned to Vienna! Never having taught a child before, he spared her the “methods” then common; Violin composed short pieces to teach her the different clefs and let her play music she loved.
Irene and Edith left Vienna on January 19, 1939 arriving two days later in Antwerp via Aachen, where they stayed at the home of distant relatives. On January 25 they left Europe, bound for San Francisco via the Panama Canal on the “Argentina”, a Swedish Johnson line half-freighter. On March 4 they arrived in San Francisco. Within a month, Edith, without means and unable to find a piano- or language teaching position, established a Viennese lunchroom in a small rented apartment which included a rented upright piano. Thanks to a fellow refugee, Irene was welcomed to the progressive Presidio Open Air School (now Presidio Hill School) by the visionary director Josephine Duveneck.
The house on Buena Vista in San Francisco – it is still a one family house today
In mid-1940 Edith was able to rent a large house on Buena Vista Avenue which became a boarding house for refugees – amongst them, pianist Bernhard Abramowitsch. As Edith’s cooking skills evolved, her effervescent personality attracted countless emigrés hungry for new contacts and a homelike atmosphere.
In 1942 Edith married the well known music theorist Oswald Jonas, her close friend since the mid-thirties in Vienna. Jonas had emigrated from Vienna immediately after the “Anschluss”, first to England, then to the USA. After visiting different music schools he was invited to become professor by the YMCA College – eventually Roosevelt University – in Chicago. Irene and her mother joined him there during the summer, in time for eighth grade In the nearby public school.
Thanks to Jonas’s introduction, Irene played for pianist Leonard Shure, who was teaching in Chicago at that time. He accepted her – once again, the first child he had taught – as a student. Her first lesson with him was memorable; it made the otherwise difficult move from her beloved San Francisco more than worthwhile. She recalls that what captivated her, apart from his own extraordinary playing, was his asking her why she was doing this or that in the music she brought for a lesson. Being used to being told what to do, simply playing as she “felt” the music, now being asked to think about it and figure it out from the score was a revelation; it seemed to give her musical independence and she became a worshipping Shure student. The Jonas home on the Near North Side would become a magnet for musicians, a warm and welcoming place where countless friends, colleagues and students would gather for delicious food and almost nightly chamber music.
Irene graduated from Waller High School at the end of WWII – a memorable period when all that had occurred, including the Holocaust and its horrors, became known. Contacts with the close friends in Europe, including those in what again was Austria, resumed and the family learned of the grandparents’ deaths in the concentration camp Theresienstadt. Irene, still a Shure student, had begun to perform in public; she continued her studies at Roosevelt College where she also attended the intense music courses taught by her stepfather. His “personalized” teaching and coaching of his teacher Heinrich Schenker’s theory had a profound influence on Irene; this came to fruition many years later in her translation of Schenker’s then-unpublished “The Art of Performance”.
Irene won the Marquette Memorial Prize in 1951, enabling her to return to Europe to further her studies. She was accepted into the Master Classes of the great pianist Edwin Fischer in Switzerland in the summer of 1951. Her first stop in Europe was in the south of France, where she had been invited to attend the rehearsals of the Casals Festival in Perpignan. This was a profound experience – a unique depth of musicmaking which remained her ideal. The summer was enhanced by meeting and becoming friends with cellist Bonnie Hampton, then still in her teens. Their musical friendship blossomed years later, when both were living in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960’s. The classes with Edwin Fischer were another revelation, his generous and colorful approach to the piano bringing much of the students’ playing – many already having careers – to life. She was thrilled to be invited to return to the following year’s course.
The second trip to Europe was made possible by Irene having been accepted by music manager Thea Dispeker, who arranged for a series of concerts in the German “Amerika Häuser”, including a joint tour with clarinetist David Glaser. During this entire period, 1954 – 56, Irene decided to make her headquarters in Vienna where she had friends, old and new. Pianist Paul Badura–Skoda, whom she knew from Fischer’s classes, suggested that she might study with his teacher Viola Thern. Frau Thern, daughter and niece of two Liszt students, was meticulous about “finger technique” – something her artist-teachers had not been interested in; this was invaluable for Irene’s pianistic development. During the same period, she entered the First Munich International Competition and the prize she won there brought her radio engagements throughout Europe. Lifelong friendships began: thanks to Edwin Fischer she met Alfred Brendel, Rita Bouboulidi, Joan Benson (who later re-introduced the clavichord to concert audiences), Evelyne Crochet amongst many others.
Back in the U.S. and settled into her own small apartment in Chicago’s “Old Town,” Irene continued practicing and performing along with teaching in Chicago’s North Shore Music Center, headed by conductor Herbert Zipper. Under his baton she performed the Schumann Piano Concerto and in Orchestra Hall, Beethoven’s third Concerto. The following summer brought new inspiration by the still-new Marlboro Festival in Vermont, headed by
Rudolf Serkin. Filled with enthusiasm from this experience, she visited New York before returning home. While there, an old friend coaxed to her to visit Princeton University: he wanted to introduce her to the mathematician Prof. Emil Artin, who had been a close friend and colleague of her father’s. It was on this fortuitous visit that she met PhD student Dana Stewart Scott. Dana’s first position after getting his doctorate was at the University of Chicago. They met again there, and married within a year! Dana, a Californian, accepted a position at the University of California, Berkeley as Associate Professor and they moved there in the summer of 1960.
After various moves and travels, Irene and Dana settled in San Francisco. Their daughter Monica was born there, in the very neighborhood where Irene’s American life began! During this period she remained active as a pianist and teacher. Later, after a move to Princeton, new musical connections made for an active chamber music life: singer Bethany Beardslee, flutist Jayn Rosenfeld, and cellist Robert Martin were inspiring, enthusiastic colleagues and together they presented imaginative programs to many enthusiastic audiences.
Dana’s invitation to become Chair of Mathematical Logic in Oxford, England in the summer of 1972 was irresistible and turned out to be life-changing for the family. Irene’s perseverance and never letting up on practicing resulted in numerous recitals and engagements, including performances of Mozart’s C major concerto K467 in Israel,1975, a Schubert recital in Mexico followed by a lecture-recital and teaching there, as well as numerous performances in England.
A final professional move took Dana to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Irene found a stimulating musical environment there, bolstered by the rekindling of a friendship with Martin Lerner, flutist in the Pittsburgh Symphony, who, in turn, eagerly introduced her to the many musicians of the Symphony who delighted in a new chamber music partner. Furthermore Irene’s deep knowledge and study of the work of Heinrich Schenker, specifically in the very practical musical angle taught through Oswald Jonas, brought her to the Music Department of Carnegie Mellon. For more than 20 years Irene taught as Artist-Lecturer there, offering courses on the art of performance, maintaining a piano studio and performing regularly – notably with Lerner’s wife mezzo soprano Mimi Lerner and The Quarteto Latinoamericano.
Her translation of Schenker’s The Art of Performance (a project started by Jonas and his pupil the conductor Heribert Esser) became the centerpiece of Irene‘s later work. While Schenker’s teachings have been scrutinized for his questionable politics and narrow focus on music only between Bach and Brahms, Irene Schreier can be credited with bringing to light his immensely useful and pedagogically profound musical approach to the piano.
In retirement Irene and Dana moved back to Berkeley, California in part to be closer to their cellist daughter Monica and her husband Dominique. Being part of their two grandchildrens’ lives has meant a tremendous amount to everyone in the family; Gaëtan in a surprising turn is currently at Carnegie Mellon University working towards his Masters in Architecture; and Magali will pursue a career in violin – she shares her grandmother and mother’s deep love for Schubert.
Both Dana and Irene have remained actively engaged in their work, cherishing their colleagues, guiding students and inspiring everyone whose paths they cross.
