CHAPTER

4

THE INCOMPARABLE
WANDA LANDOWSKA

We Americans, when we have thought of the harpsichord at all, have usually thought of it as the chattering instrument of a pedantic preciousness. . . . Now there comes to us a supple and undulating lady out of Poland, by way of Berlin, and of Paris, and lo! in a trice all our preconceived notions and prejudices vanish in thin air! The sorcery of her mind and spirit, the prestidigitation of her fluttering, skimming hands—but hands of steely strength and temper—in their infallible response, and what is the magical result? The quaint and pretty fossil for antiquarian collections lives again.¹

Wanda Landowska made her American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra on 16 November 1923. As she was the world’s best-known exponent of the harpsichord, her engagement marked a new excitement about the instrument, an excitement lacking since the departure of the Dolmetsch ensemble twelve years earlier. The news magazine Time was also making its debut in 1923. Its first mention of the harpsichord occurred in the issue for 26 November:

In Philadelphia

Philadelphia’s Stokowski, orchestra leader, triumphed gloriously when he brought forward Wanda Landowska to make her American debut. Mme. Landowska plays the harpsichord, instrument of an older time and more fastidious taste. She played the Handel Concerto in B-flat for harpsichord and orchestra and then the Bach Concerto for harpischord [sic] unsupported, and finally the Mozart Concerto in E-flat for piano and orchestra. Four recalls gave convincing evidence of her triumph.

Landowska was born in Poland in 1879. Even as a child she had a feeling for “old” music. She began to study the piano at the age of four with a kindly teacher, and soon she discovered the C major Prelude of Bach. But a stricter teacher made her practice technical exercises by Kalkbrenner and Thalberg instead of her beloved gavottes and bourrées, so she made a vow that, when she was grown up, she would play a program devoted entirely to the music of Bach, Rameau, Haydn, and Mozart—on the piano, of course.²

After discovering old instruments in museums and trying her “old” music on the few available Pleyel and Érard copies of harpsichords, Landowska was convinced that the music she loved sounded best on the instrument for which it was originally written—the harpsichord. Aided by her husband, Henri Lew, an ethnomusicologist, she continued to search out instruments in museums and private collections. Dissatisfied at first with the copies at her disposal, Landowska persuaded Gustav Lyon of Pleyel to make a grander instrument with a sub-octave set of strings—the 16-foot register, found in only a few early instruments. This instrument, introduced at the Breslau Bach Festival in 1912, became the standard Landowska harpsichord.

After various successes all over Europe (including Russia, where she played for Tolstoy), Landowska added post-war America to her triumphs. As she said, “I arrived like a lion tamer, dragging along four large Pleyel harpsichords.”³ She was not unknown in the United States, for in 1905 the popular musical journal The Etude had published an article by Robert Brussel stating,

This new epoch of the harpsichord, which is largely due to Madame Landowska, will have the effect that it deserves. These harpsichord works revived in their proper conditions will prove that emotion is not only to be associated with grandiose masses of sound. Today, music is somewhat weary of the sublime on a large scale. It is weary of routine pianistic literature, and conscious that it is impossible to go farther in brutal effect without sacrificing the very nature of music itself; it is tentatively searching other horizons. The present re-awakening of interest in the harpsichord, and the hearty reception accorded Wanda Landowska seem to accord perfectly with our new artistic necessities.⁴

Four days after her Philadelphia debut, Landowska was heard in New York City, when Stokowski and his orchestra performed in Carnegie Hall for a sold-out house. The repeated program produced a less-positive reaction from the critic of the Musical Courier:

The twangy and guitarish tone of [the harpsichord], while it pleased audiences in the days of Bach, seems to have outlived its usefulness at the present times. However, it may perhaps be better suited for solo works, and that in a smaller hall, or rather in more intimate surroundings. With the orchestral accompaniment ( . . . Stokowski used one-third of the players), the harpsichord lost its charm, because of its weak and non-carrying quality.⁵

Audiences evidently did not agree with this criticism, however. Landowska gave a series of solo performances in New York during that season, the first one at the David Mannes Music School on 21 December. As usual, she played on two instruments: Handel’s Air and Variations from Suite in E major, Bach’s Partita in C minor, several Scarlatti Sonatas, and her own Bourree d’Auvergne at the harpsichord; and the Sonata in A minor by Mozart and the Sonata in C major by Haydn at the piano. It was reported that she gave half a dozen encores at the harpsichord.⁶

On the following Sunday David Mannes introduced Landowska’s program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, describing the workings of the instrument for the audience. Of course the opening sentence of the Musical Courier’s description of the events on 16 January 1924 was not entirely accurate:

Mme. Landowska appeared at her first solo recital in New York at Aeolian Hall . . . before a good sized audience that was evidently extremely interested in the work of this unique artist and exceedingly liberal in its applause. On the harpsichord she played Handel’s Passacaglia and Bach’s Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother, a group of pieces by Scarlatti and a closing group of compositions by Pasquini, Daquin, Rameau and [Couperin] le Grand. On the piano she played a Mozart Sonata in D major and a Haydn Sonata in E minor.

Mme. Landowska is an excellent pianist. Her technic is beyond cavil and she plays with beautiful tone, warmth, and understanding. All this is true also of her harpsichord playing, and in addition one must remark the special effects which she achieves on this obsolete instrument. Particularly notable was the effect of the Bach. It is, on the piano, rather an ordinary affair, but with the special coloring given to it by the harpsichord it stands out as the miniature masterpiece that it really is. The smaller pieces by ancient masters acquired for the first time their true significance upon this instrument and under the delightful musical treatment which she gives them. It was a pleasure not only to listen to her on the harpsichord but also to see the perfection of her technic.⁷

Indeed Landowska’s influence on the musical scene seems to have mushroomed, if one is to believe the next printed encomium:

The harpsichord has come back and Wanda Landowska is the artist who has restored it. Following the great success of Mme. Landowska, no less than three other harpsichordists suddenly appeared in New York within a week [Whiting, Pelton-Jones, and Lewis Richards]. The position of the harpsichord as “ruler of the orchestra” has been re-established. Mme. Landowska has “ruled from the harpsichord” over the Philadelphia, Philharmonic, New York Symphony, Boston and Detroit orchestras, and she will be heard with the Chicago Symphony on March 13 and 14.⁸

And what a debut in Chicago!

Could anything in the whole realm of music be more delightful than the playing of The Harmonious Blacksmith on the harpsichord as done by Wanda Landowska at Orchestra Hall last Saturday night?

We doubt it.

Mme. Landowska played other solos on the same instrument which were good, too, as also a Handel Concerto, and she played a Mozart Concerto on a grand piano of the present moment (not so well, however, as at least one Chicago pianist in the audience would have done it), but these were not comparable to The Harmonious Blacksmith which was at once novel and convincing.

The orchestra cut out one number because the walking back and forth of Mme. Landowska in acknowledgement of applause took so much time, but still played numbers by Gretry and Debussy which were beautiful. The Symphony of Bax (A-flat Major) we hope never to hear again. It is monstrously ugly and terribly monotonous.⁹

The Chicago correspondent of the Musical Courier gave these impressions of Landowska’s first appearance in his city:

Wanda Landowska’s performance on the harpsichord of the Handel concerto and the three solos . . . was a novelty well deserving place on one of this season’s programs. The harpsichord, a musical instrument of other days, has been happily replaced by the piano, as the candle has been replaced by oil, then gas and now electricity. The harpsichord has a metallic sound such as the banjo, the guitar, and the mandolin, but under the fleet fingers of Mme. Landowska the instrument revealed many unforeseen possibilities. Her touch is so lovely that she makes the instrument talk in a most pleasurable manner, and it speaks with fine delicacy of tonal quality and responds to her demands in a most astonishing way, and by the use of added devices made less thin than otherwise would be possible. Mme. Landowska is not only a great harpsichordist but also a very fine pianist. All the beautiful qualities revealed in her playing of the Handel, Bach and Scarlatti selections were disclosed anew in the Mozart concerto for piano. Here is a true Mozart interpreter, a pianist whose delicate touch brings out all the beauties of the composition and whose interpretation of the classics disclosed the learned student. At the harpsichord and at the piano, Mme. Landowska is a mistress of her art and the big success she scored at the hands of a delighted public presages many returns to this city.¹⁰

In addition to such distinguished orchestral appearances and solo recitals, Landowska made her first recordings, at the RCA Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey, during her first visit to the United States. The repertoire included the highly praised Handel Variations from her concert appearances; Mozart’s Rondo alia Turca; Scarlatti’s Sonata in D, Longo 465; and her own Bourree d’Auvergne No. 1.¹¹

With all her critical acclaim and a full schedule of offers for the following season, there was no question that Landowska would return. In only a few months her artistic impression on American audiences had been extraordinary.

INTERLUDES AND TRIUMPHS

A rare glimpse of Landowska back home in Paris is provided by the American pianist Arthur Shattuck:

The Unpredictable Wanda Landowska

One summer in the 1920s, on one of their holidays, Ernest Urchs, New York director of the concert department of the Steinway firm, arrived in Paris with Mrs. Urchs and their daughter, Nita. That arrival was celebrated by a memorable dinner which Mr. Urchs gave at the select and elegant restaurant, Escargot, in honor of Fanny Bloomfield Zeisler. Our host had engaged a private dining room for the occasion, and the guests, all pianists, had assembled, all but one, and the maitre d’hotel stood ready to set things in motion. We waited fifteen minutes, twenty, a half hour; then our host gave the signal to begin.

Ten minutes later the doors were thrown open and the tardy guest, Wanda Landowska, entered smiling. It was an impressive entrance, effected entirely without excuses. Mr. Urchs jumped up and met her halfway and escorted her to her place. The Escargot’s famous snail course was already being served. La Wanda eyed the strange objects on her plate, and Mr. Urchs said, in German, “Mme. Landowska, I presume you are sufficiently Parisienne to be snail-minded.” She replied, “To tell the truth, I don’t know what they are nor how to eat them,” wherewith Mrs. Urchs got up and showed her how to extract the minuscule animal from its domicile. The famed harpsichordist was an apt pupil at the trick. Grasping the tiny instrument with her thumb and index finger, she proved expert at the game, as though she were executing a series of Couperin ornaments. She gave her unstinted approval of this new and exotic food.

The dinner was elaborate and successful, and before we separated, Wanda, in a moment of expansion, invited all of us to her Montmartre apartment the following Thursday, for lunch. Wanda lived with her mother and two able secretaries, Elsa and Trudie, in a top floor walk-up apartment consisting of several small rooms, more or less thrown together to give space for harpsichords and pianos.

The repast offered us was a Polish masterpiece. We all wondered by what magic it had been created. One course followed the other in ordered succession, and each bringing undreamed surprises. When we had finished, the tables were spirited away to give room for circulation.

Wanda’s mother was living then. Uncommonly intelligent, she was a conversationalist of exceptional brilliance. This rare art Wanda inherited from her. Wanda was equally at home in Polish, French, and German.

My personal experience with the Poles was always pleasant. I had unlimited admiration for the brilliance of their minds and for the aristocracy of their manners.

Leschetizky shared my opinions with reservation, although he was a Pole himself. He had among them devoted friends and students. He maintained that the Poles had no innate rhythmic sense, and rhythm was one of the things he found generally lacking, even in Paderewski.

During the luncheon at Wanda’s apartment, remembering what Leschetizky had told me, I asked Mrs. Zeisler how she explained the impeccable rhythm of our hostess. I said, “She’s Polish; no getting around that.”

Mrs. Zeisler said, “Oh, but she is a Jew. She merely happened to be born in Polish territory. That accounts for her perfect rhythm.”

As we talked, we were standing next to the Pleyel piano on the top of which was placed an exquisite little clavichord of the sixteenth century. It was open and displayed a painting of a landscape on its inside cover. Mrs. Zeisler was gently touching its keys as we discussed our gracious, rhythmic hostess.

Wanda Landowska. (Pencil sketch by Arthur Shattuck, dated Paris, 27 September 1923.)

Presently the unpredictable Wanda slithered up and passed behind us muttering aloud (with obvious intention that we should hear it): “Mais quel blaspheme, voyons!” [Good heavens, what blasphemy!]

She never could tolerate strangers’ fingers touching her clavichord or harpsichord. Later that afternoon she cornered me and asked, as though she didn’t know, “Quelle est cette femme là?” [Who is that woman?] I said, “Don’t you know? She is America’s greatest pianist.”

I expected contrition on her part, for her remark regarding the clavichord incident, but she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Connais pas.” [I don’t know her.] If proud Mrs. Zeisler could have known that!¹²

An even more outrageous vignette of Landowska appears in George Painter’s biography of Marcel Proust:

The new gaiety of the 1920s had begun, in time for Proust to glimpse a new age which he found too incongruous to insert in A la Recherche. At the Princesse de Guermantes’s last matinee the music is still a dying echo of the Vinteuil Septet; but the evenings of 1922 were danced away to the unfamiliar syncopations of tango and ragtime, which to survivors of a past epoch seemed to symbolise a dislocation not only of rhythm but of morals. “And what do they do after they’ve finished dancing?” enquired a great lady, after watching with deep interest a couple interlocked in the first tango she had ever seen. . . . [Proust] attended the Ritz ball on 15 January, and received a promised demonstration of the latest steps from Mile d’Hinnisdael—“even when indulging in the most 1922 of dances, she still looks like a unicorn on a coat of arms!” He admired the chaste chivalry with which Morand, dancing with a lady in mauve, succeeded in disengaging his portliness from her person; he was introduced to the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, “just when she was in the act of biting Mile Vacaresco in the buttock”; and then he fled to his private room upstairs and devoured a leg of lamb. ¹³

Life in the United States for a cosmopolitan artist such as Landowska, was doubtless less exciting than life in Paris. But Landowska confided to at least one interviewer that she “adored New York,” especially because of its beautiful sunshine.¹⁴ The American season of 1924-25 began for Landowska with a concert in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on 6 November. Her first New York engagement came on 10 November at Aeolian Hall, a program of harpsichord and piano music entitled “Bach and His Beloved Masters.” As the Musical Courier reported, “In the short time she has been here, [Mme. Landowska] attracted a large following, enough in fact to nearly fill [the hall].”¹⁵

Other concerts were further afield: Philadelphia; Toledo; Washington, D.C.; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Cincinnati, with the orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner; Dayton; Detroit; St. Louis; Lawrence, Kansas; Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; Cleveland and Oberlin, Ohio; and Pittsburgh. These programs contained music for both piano and harpsichord and usually consisted of a selection of smaller works: the ubiquitous Coucou of Daquin, a Scarlatti sonata (the “hunting-horn” E major was particularly popular), a Telemann bourrée. The Aeolian Hall program had been a heavier one, including several pieces that through the years became Landowska specialties: the Vivaldi-Bach Concerto in D, Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, and his C minor Partita, the last played, however, on the piano.

The public was not ready to accept an all-harpsichord program. The prevailing attitude about programming is revealed in a review of a New York recital by the pianist Harold Samuel: “An all-Bach program is a rare and alarming event. To attempt such a thing shows moral heroism and crowning self-confidence. To attempt it successfully shows an amazing talent, a masterly technique. . . .”¹⁶ To expand such limited horizons education was an absolute necessity. Landowska had already distinguished herself in various teaching capacities: from 1900 to 1913 she had taught harpsichord at the Schola Cantorum of Paris; from 1913 until the end of the First World War she had been on the faculty of the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, as the first “modern-day” professor of harpsichord anywhere; in the summer of 1925 she began her School of Ancient Music at her newly acquired home in the Paris suburb of St.-Leu-la-Foret; and, beginning with the fall of 1925, she undertook a famous series of lectures on early music at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which began its second year of existence on 1 October of that year. These lectures were for the entire student body, not just keyboard players, and they covered the aesthetics and repertoire of Bach and his predecessors.

Expanding horizons in another direction, Landowska appeared in the League of Composers presentation of Manuel de Falla’s El Retablo del Maese Pedro, the puppet opera commissioned by the Princesse de Polignac and first performed at her salon in Paris on 25 June 1923, with Landowska as harpsichordist. The American premiere took place in New York on 26 December 1925. Writing about highlights of the season, critic Pitts Sanborn declared, “This production proved to be one of the unforgettable events of the winter. . . . Conductor Mengelberg and the playing by Mme. Landowska of the harpsichord (which figures prominently in de Falla’s fine and individual orchestration. . . . )”¹⁷

Landowska herself commented on this production in a letter to the editor of the New York Times:

I read the following sentence in your article of December 27, referring to the League of Composers’ production last Tuesday night of “El Retablo”:

“It has been stated that this is the first modern composition which enlists the aid of the harpsichord. The statement is erroneous. Fritz Delius, to mention only one modern composer, has written pieces for the harpsichord.”

There seems to be a slight misunderstanding which it would be a good idea to clear up.

It is evident that ever since I have succeeded in giving the harpsichord, after much struggling, the position it deserves, the interest in that instrument has been much increased. It is evident, too, that many a composer has attempted to revert to olden times by imitating the old style of music, more or less felicitously. Not Fritz Delius alone, whom you mention, but many other contemporary composers, such as Rontgen, Kochinski, Buts, Drischner, &c., have composed music for the harpsichord. I receive constantly “Gavotte Rococo,” “Souvenir de Versailles,” “A la Grace de Pompadour,” with inscriptions by their authors. But this does not alter the fact that the harpsichord for the first time lives a new life, a modern life, in de Falla’s work.

Why? Because de Falla is the first to have attempted and succeeded to understand fundamentally the harpsichord, which is a very intricate instrument; he has worked a long time with me, fathomed the character and the climaxes of that instrument and studied the thousand possibilities of fioriture, without trying to reproduce the effects or manners of the ancients. De Falla is the first who, by studying the harpsichord, discovers in it fresh and unexplored sources of modern inspiration.

The concerto which he is finishing now and which has been composed for me, and which I will play next season, will be a most eloquent testimony of it.

There is one manifestation which it is particularly interesting to observe: the music of the seventeenth and of the eighteenth centuries and the instruments of the epoch have a very great influence on the younger school. The Group des Six are of my good friends. Thus we should not be astonished to see, soon, blossom out a whole school of very modern music which will have taken birth in the ever fresh though ancient source of the music of our ancestors. And Manuel de Falla will have started the movement.

WANDA LANDOWSKA
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 29, 1925.¹⁸

Traveling with an instrument the size and weight of the Pleyel harpsichord was not as easy as packing one’s piccolo and setting out for the train station. Nevertheless Landowska continued to introduce the harpsichord to towns and cities all over the eastern third of the United States and into Canada: her 1926 dates found her in Wooster, Ohio; Cooperstown and Utica, New York; Erie, Indiana, and Scranton, Pennsylvania; Newport, Rhode Island; and Toronto.

An all-Bach program was essayed during this year, albeit not one with harpsichord alone: appearing with the cellist Evsei Beloussoff allowed the program to have a variety of textures, including the cello alone: the Suite in G; cello with harpsichord: Sonatas in G and D; and harpsichord alone: the Italian Concerto.

The joint recital was interesting not alone for the high quality of musicianship displayed by both principals, but also because the production of the Bach music approximated in some respects its first introduction to the world, a fact made possible by the newly revived popularity of the harpsichord. Mme. Landowska played with that felicitous charm which has been a motivating influence in re-creating public favor for this instrument of an older day. Beneath her agile fingers the instrument attained a delicacy and tone that at once revealed the master technician and the consummate artist.¹⁹

Among the many programs played during this third season in America, a particularly fascinating one was given for the Normal Concert Course in Ypsilanti, Michigan on 8 April 1926. Not distinctive for any repertoire unusual to Landowska, the program included the by-now customary Vivaldi Concerto, the “bird pieces” of Rameau and Daquin, the E-major Scarlatti Sonata, the Bach Italian Concerto, and a Pachelbel Magnificat at the harpsichord, plus the Mozart A-major Sonata at the piano. However the concert was intriguing for the fact that the young John Challis must have been in the audience, as it was his teacher, Frederick Alexander, who arranged this concert. In less than a decade Challis would become America’s first native-born professional harpsichord maker.

Landowska had still more music to introduce to the United States this season; Time reported another first:

K.P.E. Bach

To a very musicianly audience in Manhattan, harpsichordist Wanda Landowska proved last week that there was more than one Bach worthy of mention. On the occasion of her appearance as soloist with the Flonzaley Quartet she played for the first time in the United States K.P.E. Bach’s (son of the great J.S.) Concerto in G minor for Harpsichord and String Quartet, scored by herself from the manuscript parts found in the sale of Krieger’s collection at Bonn. Said critic Lawrence Gilman of the New York Herald Tribune, “The whole of it is vital and distinguished music, but the slow movement, the Largo, is not only an exquisite piece of writing, but it is charged with a depth of feeling, a poetic beauty, a musing, tenderness. . . .”²⁰

Manuel de Falla’s Concerto, a major piece of chamber music for harpsichord and five solo instruments—flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, and cello—occupied the composer for three years. It finally received its premiere in Barcelona on 5 November 1926, with Landowska as soloist, Falla conducting. The initial impression was not favorable. The parts had been transcribed quickly and, in some spots, inaccurately; the players were underrehearsed; Falla’s conducting lacked incisiveness.

When Falla asked Landowska to repeat the Concerto for its Paris premiere, she was able to plead a prior engagement (in London). Falla himself was the soloist, playing the work twice—once at the piano and once at the harpsichord. Landowska did play the work on two subsequent occasions: she gave its American premiere with the Boston Symphony, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky, on 31 December 1926; and the same program was repeated in New York on 6 January 1927. The New York Times critic reported, “The concerto is in three movements. The work follows loosely established forms, but there is considerable freedom in tonal relations and harmonic effects, which ill conceal the cloven hoofs of Igor Stravinsky. . . . The harpsichord was at times barely audible and seldom effective in the spaces of the big auditorium [Carnegie Hall]. . . .”²¹ Landowska also played the work in Philadelphia, with Stokowski conducting.²²

Wanda Landowska was soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its concerts of January 7 and 8. . . . After the intermission, the soloist appeared . . . in a Concerto . . . by De Falla. The orchestral parts were played by the “firsts” of the respective instruments. While interesting as a novelty, this modern composition seemed strangely out of place on the old time instrument. Of course the performance of the composition was excellent as each player is an artist on his own instrument. Possibly it would have been more pleasing had it been heard in a smaller room. Mme. Landowska, as is her custom, wore a gown made in the style of the period which the harpsichord represents—this time it was a rich green velvet. Many recalls were accorded her. . . .Dr. Stokowski, with his right arm still in a sling, conducted for the harpsichord concerto and for the final orchestral number. . . .²³

Landowska was not to play the Falla Concerto again after these concerts. The use of solo players from the orchestra did not make this work a particularly efficient one for an orchestral program, and the rhythmic difficulties presented to the ensemble required considerable rehearsal time. But it was the large stretches in the harpsichord part that really made Landowska decide not to play the work: it caused her intense physical discomfort to practice and to play the piece.²⁴

Landowska continued her usual full schedule during the first months of 1927—recitals, concerts with orchestra, teaching. She sailed for Europe on 13 April. Although she was not listed on the Arthur Judson concert artists’ roster for 1927-28, she was apparently back in New York for at least one concert on 18 December 1927 at the Guild Theatre, where she appeared in a Christmas program with the English Singers, a madrigal group.

Mme. Landowska maintained and added to her high reputation as a star on her favorite instrument, setting forth Elizabethan music with Wolsey’s Wilde by William Byrd, a Gigge by Giles Farnaby, and Les Bouffons and The King’s Hunt by John Bull. In her second group were Noel by Pierre Dandrieu, Les Sauvages and La Joyeuse by Jean Ph. Rameau, and J. S. Bach’s Allegro from his D Major Concerto. Persistent applause brought delightful encores from her extensive repertoire.²⁵

After her fifth visit to the United States, Landowska

sailed early for Europe, having been obliged to cancel her final New York engagement in order to be able to reach Berlin for her scheduled concert with the Philharmonic Orchestra. She went to her chateau in France for a few days en route, and, following the Berlin engagement will tour the Continent and England until May. Her itinerary will include seven concerts in seven consecutive days in Italy, and appearances in Leipsic, Milan, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland, England and the Scandinavian countries. Mme. Landowska is not planning to return to the United States next season for the year has been entirely booked abroad, Egypt even having been included in the countries she will visit. However, she is planning to return to this country the year following.²⁶

Despite these optimistic words, she was not to return for fifteen years. The main reason undoubtedly was that her work at home, at St.-Leu-la-Foret, became more absorbing and more fulfilling with the opening on 3 July 1927 of her own concert hall, a “honey-colored temple seating about 200 auditors . . . nestled amidst the flowers and greenery of Landowska’s own garden.”²⁷

SAINT LEU

Yearly, after her American tour, Mme. Landowska goes to St. Leu, France, where she has established a “little Bayreuth.” Her courses—intimate talks in her library, rich in books and manuscripts of bygone centuries, illustrated either at the piano, the harpsichord or the clavichord—draw from all quarters instrumentalists, singers and others eager to embark upon a profound study of the technical and aesthetic principles of interpretation. She guides them along the path of two voices, music which conducts to the kingdom of polyphony. They pursue the principles of the older style not like book-worms who feed on musty treatises in the shadow of some old spinet, but like artists who strive to refashion by an anxiously pondered and soundly directed interpretation the very life of the music of a bygone period.²⁸

Landowska attracted students from all over the world, including, of course, a number from the United States. Some sense of what she had to impart and how she did it can be gleaned from this description of some public teaching at the Salle Pleyel:

The students . . . were on a platform grouped around this teacher . . . each called upon one by one to play the pieces on the program, Mme. Landowska permitting each one to determine the best interpretation. Then she would criticize this interpretation and require the pupil to defend his own point of view, after which she would show him in what way his idea was defective, playing certain passages herself.

It was a masterpiece of intelligent pedagogy. Of course I shall not be relating anything new when I declare that Mme. Landowska is a marvelous exponent of the music of the eighteenth century. What I did not know was that this artist was endowed to such a degree with the gift of initiating others into these mysteries which long and patient studies have revealed to her.

Therein, precisely, lay the interest of this course. Such lessons do indeed teach how the music of the past must be played. But their especial value is found in the love they engender for such music. I never realized how much I cherished Bach, Handel, Scarlatti or Couperin until I was present at one of Wanda Landowska’s lessons. I loved these masters instinctively, but today I know much better why I love them. Furthermore, I have also become very much aware why so many people do not love them. It is because they have never heard them in their living and creative state. . . .

Nothing could be further from stupid and narrow fanaticism than this artist’s manner of teaching. In no wise does she disdain the modern piano and employs it frequently in the interpretation of the older music. Never has she maintained that Bach can be played only on the instruments of his time. She claims, on the other hand—and her contention is unassailably logical—that when the piano is used for the performance of this music the player must effect a kind of adaptation and bring to the piano a sort of interpretation based on a study of the original instrument.

The vibrant life which animates polyphony is the third great truth that Wanda Landowska’s teaching brings to light. All polyphonic music—even that written for the keyboard—is governed by the laws of song. Taking this principle as a point of departure she bases her study of such music upon the two-voiced Inventions, which offer the key to the interpretation of all music whatsoever written for several voices. Therein she only follows the example of the old masters of composition who grounded the entire study of their art on an understanding of two-part counterpoint.²⁹

A particularly astute description of life for a student of the School of Ancient Music is found in the memoirs of the German harpsichordist Eta Harich-Schneider:

But back to the year 1929. Professor Springer knew Landowska quite well and counseled me to try to study with her. “You will get to know a very nice but very conceited lady. And if she says something that doesn’t please you, don’t argue with her!” From Springer and Johannes Wolf I already knew the Landowska saga: her extravagant success in Berlin, her tragic marriage with the Communist Lew, the tales of love and scandal about her and her female students, her eighteenth-century manners: “Permit me to introduce my husband, Monsieur Lew, and Madame So-and-so, my husband’s mistress”—a much laughed-at scene. Further her beginning at the Hochschule, finally Lew’s murder by right-wing terrorists in 1919 and Wanda’s move to Paris. “Watch out for your chastity,” laughed Johannes Wolf significantly as I took my leave.

A hot Paris summer, dust and noise in the Gare du Nord, joyful, excited anticipation, and then the pleasant country surroundings of Saint-Leu-la-Foret. Elschen Schunnicke, Wanda’s German confidant and secretary, received me talkatively, showed me photo albums of Wanda’s harpsichord courses and was not reserved in talking about the intimate acquaintance with prominent persons. Then, for a moment, I was permitted to listen in on a private lesson in the Music Room. I was amazed: the Goddess sat like a comfortable little mother, small, a little bent, glasses on the gigantic nose, pencil in hand next to the harpsichord and corrected fingerings, exactly like my piano teacher Alma Martin in Frankfurt-am-Orkus!

Finally I was called into the presence. Wanda’s private workroom contained a Pleyel harpsichord and a library of harpsichord literature from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in original editions as well as the relevant literature on the subject in five languages. The furnishings were Louis XVI. On the table stood a vase with large opened light red roses. I brought Wanda pressed leaves from the grave of Lew [her husband]. She was pleased by my eagerness for a study of “sources.” Then she turned at once to examining my hands and went through some finger exercises with me. It was the purest ballet school. She stated that my hands were first-class, and if I were to devote myself seriously to the harpsichord, she would take care that I should become her representative in Germany, “because there is no one there,” said she pointedly.

She kept her word. Already after the second course she wrote to Leo Kestenberg and recommended me as her successor for the harpsichord professorship at the Berlin Hochschule. Kestenberg managed to obtain my appointment to that position through the director, Professor Georg Schuenemann.

I was totally amazed at Landowska. She was one of those rare women who had built her career totally alone, without money. Because of this she was also shot at like the holy martyr Sebastian. The groups of players from the Jugendbewegung and from the Hausmusik groups would not leave alone a single hair of her head, and accused her of stylistic ignorance. She was, however, very well read and far ahead of them both in sources and knowledge. In everything she was very stubborn, but so were the others, only they had less talent!

“She was sweet as a mother and strict as a ballet master,” it says in my diary. Certainly she knew how to place herself in a stage picture! She came to class by a garden path reserved only for her; it ran behind the great lawn where her Polish gardener, Cadzin, worked; she would greet him with a relaxed word and he would fly to kiss her hand; then through her private entrance she would enter her small Sanctum Sanctorum behind the concert hall, and would stand suddenly on her stage—we would all rise silently. “Seat yourselves, my children.”

Her relationship to Germany was ambivalent; a certain love-hate. I believe that she had never given up the wish to return to her position in Berlin. . . . The “BB,” the Prussian Staatsbibliothek, she missed greatly. In the five years I studied with her I often sought references there for her, work which I was later to use for my own source material. There lay, certainly, an air of the emigre around the costumes of her German secretaries and their mania for wearing sandals. We all were permitted to approach the harpsichord only in sandals. . . .

Wanda’s students lived entirely dependent on her, as planets circle a sun. The discipline was first class, the atmosphere rather pretentious. Professional critiques of Wanda’s interpretation, teaching methods, or choice of literature I never heard, but in her absences bitter complaints about her injustices, whims, intrigues—an atmosphere of jealousy like that of a twelfth-century court.

The class ran only in summer and ended with a costume ball and a champagne reception. I remember especially the one from September 4, 1932. The loveliest was Wanda as “Royal Mistress” with her long hair in great Louis XV style, off-the-shoulder gown of heavy yellow silk. She looked bewitching. Her shoulders were still perfect and snow-white. Madame Nef came as a German sailor in my sailor suit; Ruggiero Gerlin as Madam Verdurin, and a large Belgian girl as “young Greek,” with headband and white linen shift: by Zeus she looked like a fat girl in a nightgown. . . .

I wore an Etonian tie and riding costume with red jacket; Isabelle Nef acknowledged me, “His royal majesty, the Prince of Wales.” Wanda greeted me with a deep courtly bow. I danced a lot with the girls because all the men were such bad dancers. Wanda was very amused: “Eta has outdone us all.” She seated herself at the piano and played popular songs and old waltzes . . . she could do this too.

Through a chance experience I saw Wanda once entirely without mask. From that experience I know that her famous hardness, her mistrust, her intrigue, her pride were only protective coverings created by a deeply musical person in order to withstand the difficulties of life. I was walking in October 1932 in the evening twilight through the woods toward Taverny, through the rustling colored leaves which covered the ground. Coming the opposite direction was a tiny, insignificant, bent woman. She saw me just as she saw everything else, but she did not recognize me, for she was not wearing her glasses. And I recognized her, also, only in the split second of passing, so private was Wanda “La Victorieuse.” I saw a shy, enthusiastically lively face, lost in dreams, from which two large eyes pierced the evening darkness.³⁰

American harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick was another of the students at St. Leu. His comments give a certain balance to Harich-Schneider’s view of Landowska’s school, for it is well known that Kirkpatrick and Landowska did not see eye-to-eye through most of his career.

Wednesday, October 14, 1931: Thursday afternoon I took the train out to St. Leu-la-Foret to see Landowska. While she was engaged with lessons, her secretary took me around and introduced me to some of the hocus pocus and some of the pupils. “Yes,” she said, “Wanda Landowska is a truly wonderful person. She can do anything. Yes, she even planned this garden. You’ve heard about the concert hall. We call it the Temple, devoted to old music,” etc.

“Holy jumping cats,” I thought, “what am I getting into.” My amazement increased when we entered the hall and found a perfect Negro mammy, Landowska’s chief pupil in costume having his picture taken. There were a number of women, one the kind that gives you a finger instead of a whole hand, and a number of old harpsichords obviously chosen for decorative rather than musical effect, in a very nice room with two Pleyel harpsichords and two Pleyel pianos ensconced on a little raised platform. I was somewhat alarmed by the hocus pocus-ness of the atmosphere and the general spirit of “Isn’t this old music just lovely. And nobody can play it but Landowska!”

Costume Ball at St. Leu, participants identified by Putnam Aldrich. First row, seated: Ruggiero Gerlin (Italian), dressed as Landowska; Dr. Caroli of Paris; Regine Hoeree. Second row, seated: Rebecca Davidson (American); Ethel Preston (American); Jeanne (Landowska’s cook); Lipnitzki’s niece; Jean Christie (Australian); Amparito (Spanish); Incarnasion (Spanish); Anyla (Polish). Third row, seated: Miss Offheimer (American); Carmen (Spanish); Lipnitzki (Russian photographer); Elsa (Landowska’s companion from Berlin). Fourth row, standing: Julietta Goldschwang (Argentinian); Madeleine Cohn; Mme. Sacerdoce (Nelia’s mother); Nelia (Argentinian); Landowska; Arthur Hoeree (Belgian critic); Clifford Curzon (English); Trudy; Putnam Aldrich; Momo Aldrich. At the top: Aime (the gardener). (Courtesy of Momo Aldrich.)

Some time later came a hush, and Landowska entered. She is a sort of combination of Mrs. Landowsky, the pawnbroker’s wife, and Wanda, daughter of Henry VIII, sister of Mary and Elizabeth. I shook her hand, which she withdrew quickly, and said, “Oh, be careful. My harpsichord hand!” However, she was very nice in a sort of come-into-the-parlor-Red-Riding-Hood way.

Then she and pupils rehearsed some music for two harpsichords, and as she was very tired, and as I was a bit swamped in hocus pocus, I was not much pleased with her playing, which seemed rather dry, resembling nothing so much as a wellbred typewriter, rather than a well-tempered clavichord. I found her registration quite contrary to the structure of the music, and her phrasing the exact opposite of anything I had found out about Bach’s phrasing. I began to wonder what I was going to do. . . .³¹

Kirkpatrick began to change his initial harsh opinion of the virtuosa on subsequent visits:

I went back on Saturday to her class. . . . There I was considerably more favorably impressed, particularly with the rhythmic precision and clarity of her technic and her specifically harpsichord touch, and I realized what much needed benefit I would derive from a thorough grounding of technic, although I did not approve of many details, and although one must question her interpretations constantly for historical accuracy and stylistic consistency. She made me play for her and told me that I was very talented and had a good hand, but needed technic.³²

The young Kirkpatrick met Eta Harich-Schneider that very evening; she was to have a major influence on him and become a friend and helper to his career.

By the weekend Kirkpatrick’s capitulation was nearly complete: Landowska’s performance with Gerlin of the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos elicited these words:

I have only once heard Mozart playing that even approached the precision, brilliance, and delicacy of hers, and the way she could turn and mold the phrases and simply take you straight to heaven in the slow movements. . . . Her harpsichord registration is often very effective, as well as her playing, although frequently unsound stylistically. She is a much greater musician than I first thought her.³³

Kirkpatrick was not the only American student at St. Leu. He mentioned as one of his best colleagues “American harpsichordist Lucille Wallace.”³⁴ Pianists such as Frank Bishop, a “Miss Hutchison,” and the Boston teacher Lillian Paige attended the summer classes. Perhaps most important to American harpsichord students in later years was the apprenticeship of Putnam Aldrich, who arrived at St. Leu with his old friend Miss Paige in the summer of 1929.