Ferguson Webster

American concert pianist and teacher (1909–1982) from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania whose father, Beveridge Webster, Sr., was founder and director of the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Music established in 1893. In 1921 the elder Webster sold his conservatory and moved the family to post-WWI France, where his 3 children, Ferguson, Elizabeth, and their elder brother, Beveridge Webster, Jr., studied at the American Academy at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger and Robert Casadesus, and later at the Conservatoire de Paris with Isidore Philipp. The family befriended Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky, as well as the Australian soprano Nellie Melba and the illustrious musical Menuhin family. Ferguson concertized with the teenage prodigy Yehudi Menuhin and collaborated with the young violinist in several recordings for Great Britain's The Gramophone Co. Ltd. on its His Master's Voice label in the 1930s before returning home to America prior to WWII, where he taught for many years in the private studio of his Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, home until his death in 1982.