Obituary of Betty-Jean Hagen

FAMED VIOLINIST DIES 30 YEAR RESIDENT OF DUTCHESS COUNTY Betty-Jean Hagen, the Canadian violin virtuoso who came to New York to study at Juilliard with the master pedagogue Ivan Galamian and became one of the most accomplished classical performers of her time, died December 29th at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, NY. The cause was cardiac arrest. She was 86 years old and spent the last thirty of those on her small hilltop farm in Pleasant Valley, NY in the company of her dogs and horses, parrots and canaries, her son Paul Greicius and spouse Pat Johnson – and hundreds of students who flocked to her studio for instruction. Miss Hagen was born in Edmonton Alberta, October 17, 1930, the daughter of Goskall and Ada Lancey Hagen. She began violin lessons at seven with Alexander Nicol. So prodigious was her talent that at age 9 she was awarded a full scholarship to the University of Chicago Conservatory. Two Years later World War II erupted and the Hagens were obliged to return to Canada. Back home in Alberta, at age 12 she was a member of the Edmonton Philharmonic, then moved to Calgary in 1946 to study with Clayton Hare and play with the Calgary Symphony Orchestra. With her gown in her saddlebag and her fiddle over her shoulder, she traveled by horseback, then trolley to the thriving prairie town concert hall – in subzero temperatures. Still in her teens, she had already become undauntable. In the Fall of 1949 as Hagen was preparing to enter college at Calgary, stunning news arrived – a telegram announcing she had received a full, all-expenses-paid scholarship to the Royal Conservatory in Toronto where she would study with the Hungarian Professor Géza de Kresz. She graduated in 1951 and was awarded yet another scholarship – the Eaton Graduating Scholarship – whereby she was able to go to New York and perfect her artistry at Juilliard under the famed Ivan Galamian. Meanwhile the rising star had already scored her first major coup. In 1950 she won the coveted Naumburg Award which included a recital debut in Town Hall, New York. In 1951 she won the Pathé-Marconi Prize in Paris and gave recitals in France, Holland, Britain, and Switzerland. In 1952 she made her London debut and received the Harriet Cohen Commonwealth Medal as the outstanding woman musician of the British Commonwealth. She won the Carl Flesch Medal in 1953 and the Canadian Press named her "Woman of the Year". Betty-Jean's playing was characterized by lush, haunting tonal colors, sublimely elegant phrasing and breathtaking technique. This superlative combination gained her the renowned Leventritt Foundation Award in 1955 and the following year, a solo performance at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulis. Solo appearances followed with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the (Amsterdam) Concergebouw Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, and the Orchestre de la Suisse romande. By 1960 she had made seven concert and recital tours in Europe, and performed in Canada on the CBC, in recital, and with orchestras under Thomas Mayer and Herbert von Karajan. In 1962 she medaled at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. During most of this time she lived in New York City but by the 1970's she had moved to Westchester County, NY and devoted herself mainly to private teaching and coaching chamber ensembles. She was a member of the Westchester String Quartet and the Emelin Piano Trio and from 1975 to 1984 was concertmaster of the Westchester Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Hagen loved nature and horses and the outdoors so in 1983 she moved to her beloved Tourmaline Farm in Dutchess County, NY. Here in the land of Rip Van Winkle she herself would become larger than legend, even though, owing to a modest and gentle manner, it was years before many of her associates ever knew of her achievements, or that she had played a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II. Betty-Jean delighted in playing with her colleagues. She became concertmaster of the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra and of the Orange County Chamber Orchestra and joined the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. The last concert she played was with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic at the Bardavon Opera House little more than a month before she died. She taught at Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and for twenty years was Professor of Music at Vassar College. But never was she happier than in her own beautiful studio overlooking Pleasant Valley and the rolling Taconic hills where she galloped on horseback and hiked with her dogs. This was her center and where it became clear to the musical community that Betty-Jean Hagen had brought conservatory level teaching to the Hudson Valley. "She had the most incredible mind" said one adult student who was also a violin teacher. "I discovered during my second lesson that every etude she assigned me, she already knew by memory. Well, in six-plus years of lessons we went through nine etude books! You do the math!" Likewise she absorbed every minute detail of Galamian's methodology and imparted to her students a respect for this precision, control, exactitude and preparation. These she knew to be the elements that ultimately released the violin into soaring lyricism, transcendent textures and tone, and an infinite emotional range. Betty-Jean Hagen was a force of nature. She had an irresistible personal magnetism and was committed from the depths of her soul to nurturing the artistry of every student. She taught as she lived – with warmth and kindness, grace and humor. And thus it happens that generations of devoted students came to love music, came to love the violin, came to love life and came to love her. Ms. Hagen is survived by her partner/spouse of 35 years, Patricia H. Johnson. Also surviving are children from her first marriage (to Vincent Greicius, also a violinist) Paul J. Greicius and Valerie Greicius Oster and three grandchildren: Samantha Siciliano, Jessica Siciliano and Caroline Oster. Ms. Hagen's oldest child, Elaine Greicius Tenca, predeceased her in 2008. Her older brother, Alfred, died in 1944 during the liberation of France.