Hannah Noether Collection

Hannah I. Aschkenasy was born in Cologne, Germany on October 3, 1915. Her father was Louis Aschkenasy, a Zionist from an Orthodox community in Cologne. He was an early benefactor of Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem and passed along his interest in supporting the hospital to his daughter.

Hannah fled Nazi Germany in 1939 for the Netherlands where she became involved with a refugee absorption committee. Through friends there she met her future husband, Rolf E.W. Noether, from Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. They married in the Netherlands before escaping to England, where their daughter Ursula was born “during the blitz”. In late 1940 they emigrated to Quito, Ecuador and then settled in a German-Jewish community in the Riverdale section of the Bronx in New York City. In 1952 they moved to Larchmont, NY. In addition to Ursula, Hannah and Rolf had a second daughter, Carol (later Hochberg). Rolf Noether died in 1979.

Soon after moving to Larchmont Hannah spoke with her fellow European refugee and neighbor Max Perutz about their shared love of chamber music. Together with Fritz Kraemer, “a musicologist”, they came up with the idea of continuing, in Larchmont, the European tradition of hosting chamber music in private homes. Hannah enlisted Mrs. Lilli Bernstein, a concert pianist in her native Germany before her marriage and emigration, and Mrs. Betty Sonfield, a cellist, and together the three women began the Larchmont Chamber Music Circle (LCMC). Hannah concentrated on selecting and scheduling musicians and collaborated with the musicians and their agents to program each concert. Lilli functioned as the LCMC secretary and bookkeeper, maintaining a record of the concerts. Lilli’s husband, Arnold Bernstein, died in 1971, and Lilli died in 1993.

LCMC was funded primarily by selling subscriptions to friends and neighbors, with the size of the audience limited by the size of the various hosts’ living rooms, often up to 60 people; maintaining the intimate atmosphere the founding members had originally sought was critical to the mission of the organization. Most seasons LCMC offered between three and five concerts. Hannah worked closely with Mrs. Rosalie Leventritt, “a prominent patron of music” who sponsored the Leventritt prize for young musicians; and with Dorothy Delay, a well-respected violin teacher at the Julliard School and Sarah Lawrence College. Through these contacts, Hannah engaged talented and promising young musicians who often performed with LCMC for many seasons even after becoming busy and successful musicians. These long-term relationships developed from the musicians’ familial relationship with Hannah, and their enjoyment playing for the knowledgeable and receptive LCMC audiences in the warm atmosphere of people’s homes.

1955-1956 was the first LCMC concert season; the concerts continued for 52 years. LCMC was incorporated in New York state in 1962. Hannah also programmed concerts during her summers in Switzerland at Chalet-à-Gobet and elsewhere, often scheduling musicians well-known to her from LCMC in between their performances at European festivals. And Hannah inherited her father’s legacy of supporting Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem. For Hannah, in addition to monetary donations to the hospital, her support took the form of planning annual fundraising concerts, often at Carnegie Hall, together with the staff of what is now the American Committee for Shaare Zedek Medical Center, based in New York.

Hannah continued programming concerts through LCMC’s 50th year. There were a few concerts after the 50th season and into the 2005/2006 season. The November 15, 2006 concert was a “commemorative concert honoring Mrs. Hannah Noether”, who had died in February 2006.

Hannah’s daughter Ursula Noether Blumenthal and Ursula’s husband David Blumenthal compiled photographs, programs and correspondence in a manuscript in 2018, “Fifty-Two Years of Chamber Music”, further documenting Hannah’s achievements in providing chamber music locally in Larchmont, and in Switzerland, as well as orchestral music in larger venues in support of Shaare Zedek Hospital.