The musical talent of the then 16-year-old Georg Kreisler was discovered in their new environment shortly after the Kreisler family arrived in the USA in 1938. He was involved in several high school performances as a pianist and arranger. The conductor Artur Guttmann, who was friends with the Kreisler family, noticed Georg’s talent and sent the young man to the composer Arnold Schönberg, who was a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Schönberg was also impressed with Kresiler’s talent and wanted him to join his composition classes. It was for this purpose that he wrote the recommendation presented here to the UCLA matriculation office.

In this way, Schönberg tried to obtain a special status for Georg Kreisler, because he was too young to already have gained his ‘Abitur’ qualification from his former grammar school in Vienna or to have graduated from high school in the USA. Kreisler took Schönberg’s letter of recommendation to his interview with Mr Showman, the university rector, but without success.

Shortly after that, Georg Kreisler began studying elsewhere - at the University of Southern California. He was soon the main earner in the Kreisler family household, as the university singing teachers paid the young pianist to accompany their students. He also performed on stage as a pianist and taught actors who had to play the role of a pianist how to sit properly at the piano.