Nadia Reisenberg was an American pianist of Russian origin and a music teacher. She was born in Vilna and was the eldest of three daughters of accountant Aaron Reisenberg and Rokha (Rokhl) Grad, both natives of Kovno. Her sister was the theremin player Clara Rockmore.
In 1915, Reisenberg moved with her family to St. Petersburg to study with Leonid Nikolayev. The family later moved through Vilna, Warsaw, and Germany before settling in the United States, where she lived from 1922. Her first American performance was on December 17, 1922, when she played Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s Polish Fantasy in the composer’s presence. She gave her first solo recital in 1924. In 1930, she entered the Curtis Institute of Music to study with Josef Hofmann, and after graduating taught there from 1934 to 1938.
Reisenberg’s main teaching career was at the Juilliard School; her students there included Ralph Votapek. She also taught at Mannes College of Music, where Richard Goode was among her students. Her concert career peaked in the 1940s, and she often focused on chamber music, performing frequently with the Budapest String Quartet. She recorded Johannes Brahms’s Clarinet Sonata with Benny Goodman.
Her repertoire included many Russian composers, including Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Sergei Prokofiev, whose concertos were rarely performed in the United States in the mid-20th century. In the 1939–40 season, she performed all of Mozart’s piano concertos in a series of weekly radio broadcasts with conductor Alfred Wallenstein; Arthur Rubinstein praised the performances. After 1950, she devoted herself mainly to teaching and served for many years on the jury of New York’s Leventritt Competition.
In 2008, a four-CD collection of Reisenberg’s recordings of Frédéric Chopin’s works was reissued. It included all of the nocturnes and mazurkas as well as several other pieces. A contemporary reviewer praised her playing for its warm tone, clarity, unshowy virtuosity, and musical judgment.