In New York Landau resumed the struggle to find work. Her efforts were starting to pay off. Before she had left for Vermont, on June 5, 1940, Landau had been invited to meet the music committee of the Friendship House. This was a missionary group dedicated to social justice, founded in the early 1930s by the activist Catherine de Hueck Doherty. The invitation came from the committee chair, pianist and choral conductor Kurt Adler, himself a refugee from Prague. Landau gave her first lecture in English on November 13, 1940: “Music in the French Salon.” Her approach seemed to translate. After her presentation a sponsor at Friendship House told her: “Your voice is music, you are a poet, you painted everything before our eyes.” Other lectures there followed. With a little momentum, Landau thought she might be able to find someone else to do her struggling for her.

In part thanks to a recommendation from Bruno Walter, Landau set up a meeting with Sol Hurok, an impressive impresario of the day. At his office in Radio City, she found “a small man with glasses.” She had wanted to contact him sooner, she told him, but, nervous about her English, had felt it best to wait. Hurok responded with a smile and kindly invited her to speak in German (he himself could get by in a number of languages). Despite the friendly gesture, he made it clear that he was not interested in her work. He managed musicians and other artists in New York—not lecturers. In the United States, he claimed, lecturing was “bad business!” Still, Landau countered, “Yes, I am a lecturer but I am also not one.” She clarified that she was a musician as well. She viewed her lectures as a musical performance, both with the artistry of her speaking style as well as its connection to live musical performance. In later publicity material (that Landau surely authored), her work as “an artist” was described as a “new medium,” similar to reviews in the Jewish press during her days in the league: “Entertainment different from any that is available on the concert stage today.”