8vo. (Front endpapers slightly toned.) Original cloth (spine head and one fore-corner bumped); dust jacket (price-clipped, minor wear to extremities); slipcase. Provenance: Antonia Brico (1902-1989), conductor and pianist (gift inscription to Margaret and Maria Lial on front pastedown, dated 10 July 1950, and related cards and newspaper clippings laid in). 

 

Fourth printing. ASSOCIATION COPY. The Dutch-born conductor and pianist, Antonia Brico had an enduring friendship with Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the organ-playing doctor who practiced medicine in the wilds of Africa. The two shared a love of Bach’s music, and she detoured home from an engagement in Europe to visit Schweitzer in Africa in 1950. This copy was inscribed by Brico to music shop owner in Monterey CA, Margaret Lial, who arranged concerts in a hall above her shop where presumably the two met. In July 1938, Brico was the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic.

 

[With:]  A postcard photograph depicting a nursing care scene in Lambarene, in western Gabon, where Schweitzer’s hospital was built to treat tropical diseases, INSCRIBED BY SCHWEITZER on the recto margin to Miss Margaret Lial and additionally inscribed and signed by him in French on verso; a photograph of Brico conducting the Denver Orchestra in 1950, inscribed and signed by her on verso; a two-page photostat Christmas letter from Brico outlining her travels, including her lecture on Schweitzer and being his guest at his French headquarters in Gunsbach, inscribed to Margaret Lial and signed at end, with envelope; an unsigned photograph portrait of Schweitzer; and several newspaper clippings related to Brico laid in.