Emily Gresser (as Helena Lange) plays Frantisek Drdla's 'Serenade,' recorded by Pathe in New York in c. April 1921.
Gresser (1894-1981) was born in Newark, New Jersey. She began violin lessons with Carl Tollefsen at the age of 6. Two years later, she became a pupil of Sam Franko (a student of Joseph Joachim).
Having made her debut in New York in 1910, she travelled to Europe, where she continued her studied in Berlin with Franko.
The outbreak of the First Workd War saw her back in America, where she toured.
She married in 1920, and subsequently gave up performing professionally.
Her only recordings appear to have been six sides made for Pathe in 1921. In the acoustic era, Pathe recorded on large-sized cylinders from which disc stampers were made by a dubbing process. Sometimes the results were reasonably good, but at other times they were poor. Often, significant amounts of mechanical noise - in particular a thumping sound - were transferred to the disc stamper, as was the case with this recording. I have done my best to minimise the problem, but there is no magic wand solution.
I made the transfer from Grand Pree 18214.