Thursday, July 17, 2025
Court Street Music, a community-rooted music school founded in 1999 by composer-pianist Leonard Lehrman and soprano Helene Williams in Valley Stream, will mark its 25th anniversary on June 15 with a free public house concert and student recital showcasing emerging talent and professional premieres.
The 25th annual House Concert and Student Recital on June 15 at 2 p.m., takes place at 33 Court St., the school’s home studio.
Over the past quarter-century, Court Street Music has offered lessons and coaching in voice, piano, violin, guitar, cello, saxophone, clarinet and composition. Its annual concert tradition highlights student talent and professional collaborations, reflecting the founders’ mission to make high-level music education and performance accessible in a personal, community-focused setting.
“Helene and I have been performing together since March 1987, including many house concerts at the homes of friends in Israel, Australia and across Europe and North America — June 15, 2025 — our 25th annual house concert and student recital will be our 712th performance together,” Lehrman said. “But in August, 1999, we realized our dream when we purchased our 10-room house, built in 1928, which included a 1959 annex that became our concert hall and where we’ve been able to make many, many recordings, over 5,000 videos on YouTube, with over a million views, to date.
And to give numerous recitals, including one each year in June, featuring performances by our students, our colleagues and ourselves,” he continued. “We called ourselves Court Street Music, a name shared by only one other music school that we know of in Salem, Oregon. We’re very lucky that we have neighbors who have recommended their friends, and their children’s friends, to become our students.”
This year’s program features a variety of vocal and instrumental works, including several premieres. Williams opens the concert with Robert Schumann’s song “Widmung,” a piece composed as a wedding gift for Clara Schumann. The song holds personal meaning for Williams and Lehrman, as she also sang it at their wedding in 2002.
Following a selection by Johannes Brahms, violinist Daniel Hyman will perform “Adoration” by Florence Price, arranged by Elaine Fine. Price, one of the first African American women recognized as a symphonic composer, has gained increasing recognition in recent decades. Hyman will also perform “Beneath the Waning Moon,” Lehrman’s setting of a poem by William Cullen Bryant. The piece was originally composed for the Bryant Bicentennial and premiered at the Bryant Library in Roslyn in 1994.
The program includes two songs by Lehrman based on poems by the philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt. Composed in the early 1950s, these works reflect Arendt’s anti-fascist philosophy. Baritenor Thomas Smith will sing them in English, followed by mezzo-soprano Perri Sussman singing the originals in German.
Smith will also premiere Lehrman’s setting of “Untold Stories,” a poem by the late Edward Thibault. Sussman will perform Lehrman’s setting of “Yellow Cabs,” a poem by Rosalie Calabrese.
A highlight of the program is the debut of the Valley Stream Piano Quartet, comprising Hyman on violin, Hui Wang on viola and violin, Peter Howard on cello and Lehrman on piano. The quartet will perform two major works: the Piano Quartet No. 1 by Robert M. Palmer and the Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Opus 87, by Antonín Dvořák.
Palmer, Lehrman’s former teacher at Cornell University, composed the 1947 quartet, which was widely performed in its time but is only online as an audio recording. This concert’s video recording will mark its first visual internet presence. The concert is also dedicated to Palmer’s memory. Palmer’s daughter and son-in-law, Anne and David Plaine, will attend the concert virtually.
“He was one of six composers writing music for our wedding, July 14, 2002, but while doing so, he had a stroke,” Lehrman said. “We drove up to Ithaca for our honeymoon and visited him in the hospital, where we found he had been given the wrong medication, as confirmed by my father, a doctor, and demanded that it be changed, and were told later we had saved his life. Every summer thereafter, until his death, we visited him and his family in Ithaca and played and sang for him.”
In between the two piano quartets, Wang, Howard and Lehrman will perform a movement from Joel Mandelbaum’s piano trio, inspired by a poem by Robert Frost. Sussman will also premiere two four-song cycles composed by Lehrman. “Our Four Seasons,” based on poems by Lehrman’s Harvard classmate Geza Tatrallyay, will be introduced by the poet himself, who will read his original Hungarian texts before each song. The second, “The Skovron Cycle,” sets poems by Alex Skovron, an Australian writer whose work addresses deeply personal and historical themes, including reflections on the Holocaust. Skovron will participate in the concert virtually from Melbourne.
For those interested in attending the concert, reservations are encouraged. Call (516) 825-2939 or email LeonardJLehrman@gmail.com.
