Pianists mourn ‘Miss Olga’
RIPOlga Radosavljevich, who taught piano for 59 years at the Cleveland Institute of Music, has died at the age of 84.
Known to one and all as Miss Olga, she came to Cleveland from Serbia in 1956 to study with Arthur Loesser in 1956. Three years later she was accepted into Rosina Lhévinne’s studio at Juilliard. But her parents were in Cleveland and that’s where she returned to teach and raise a family of her own. Miss Olga retired from CIM in 2019.
The pianists she most admired were Rudolf Firkušný, Daniel Barenboim, Rudolf Serkin, Arthur Loesser and Martha Argerich.
As one of her former students,
thank you for this post. She loved Mitsuko Uchida’s playing as well. I had the great privilege of sitting in Severance Hall with her to hear Rudolf Serkin play his last Emperor Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra. That memory and countless more are
with me today as I reflect on her extraordinary life’s work.
I was at that Serkin concert, too. It was his last ever concert. I also attended a Radu Lupu recital in the recital hall at Severance Hall. I was working there then and had arranged for her to bring students. She was a force.
I believe his last performance was a Mozart #12 in Brattleboro VT. I was there.
hi lydia it’s Brenda she spoke of you often
That photograph totally encapsulates how I remember her – I don’t think I ever saw her without that broad, infectious grin on her face.
A name out of the past. I was in Cleveland in the late 1960s and early 1970s (I was a student of Loesser in the year before he died), and I never met her, but she was a presence. Very sorry to hear.
“Miss Olga”, was my piano teacher, at Cleveland Institute of Music! She was wonderful, and helped me, so much! ‘Miss Olga’ will be sorely missed!