The Polish Virtuoso

Josef Hofmann, Ignaz Friedman, Ignaz Jan Paderewski

by David Dubal









In the great continuity of piano playing, Poland's contribution is one of the glories of that beleaguered nation's contribution to world culture. Even before Paderewski stormed the keyboard, the Polish pianist was a commonplace - T. S. Eliot's delicious quip in Portrait of a Lady was surely inspired by the all-pervading Paderewski. Eliot wrote: "We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger tips."

Of course the foundation of Polish pianism originates from the virtually self-taught Chopin - the poet of the piano - whose exotic rubato introduced the Slavic temperament to Western Europe. So wayward were his rhythmic fluctuations in his Mazurkas that, when accused of not playing in time, he simply called it "a national trait." Poland's link to Chopin is indelible; he is Poland's pride and nourishment. It was inevitable that his "cannon buried in flowers", in Schumann's phrase, would cause the Nazi scourge to officially deprive Poland of Chopin during World War II.

Polish pianism from Chopin to the present has thrived. Dozens of the finest pianists were born and studied in Poland, only to leave their homeland for obvious political and career reasons. Many, however, were conspicuous for their passionate patriotism.

This CD presents three of the greatest Polish pianists: Paderewski (1860-1941), Josef Hofmann (1876-1957) and Ignaz Friedman (1882-1948). To the public they were primarily known as interpreters, but, unlike contemporary pianists, composing was an enriching process and an essential aspect of their tradition. This recording presents a rare documentation of their small 'character pieces', as well as several by another Polish pianist-composer, Moritz Moszkowski, whose piano pieces had an enormous vogue; near the turn of the century it was more than likely that one of his pieces would be on the piano in the parlour.

Josef Hofmann was born in Podgorze, near the ancient Polish capital of Cracow. A prodigy who was compared with Mozart, he made a long tour of Europe at nine. By the age of eleven he found himself on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in one of the most sensational débuts in pianistic history. After completing half of a long tour, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children curtailed the concerts, but not before the family received a gift of $50,000 from Alfred Corning Clark with the provision that the child not set foot on stage until he was eighteen. It was agreed, and the Hofmanns went home to Berlin where Josef worked at composition with Heinrich Urban and at the piano with Moszkowski, who was followed by Anton Rubinstein, considered to be the world's greatest virtuoso.

At the age of eighteen, his mentor Rubinstein conducted with Hofmann as soloist in his Fourth Concerto. Within months Hofmann was back to concertising in full force, being universally noted as Rubinstein's heir. For thirty seasons Hofmann played non-stop. In 1913 he performed within days twenty-one sold-out recitals in St. Petersburg alone, in the Salle Noblesse, which seated 3200. He played 255 compositions before 68,000 people. The war prevented him from ever again appearing in Eastern Europe. In 1924 he began a fruitful association with the newly-founded Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and in 1928 became the School's Director, dividing his time at Curtis and on the concert stages of the United States. At Curtis he taught a select number of pupils, including another child prodigy, Shura Cherkassky.

Hofmann rightly thought that his European reputation had declined, and when he returned to England in 1933 he played to small audiences. After a Golden Jubilee Concert in 1937, he resigned his position at Curtis and for the next eight years continued to perform in the United States. Rakhmaninov, his close friend, had died in 1943, and he now shared his popularity with Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein, who was living in the United States during the war years.

With his retirement at seventy, he lived for another eleven years in California, concentrating on his many inventions which had always occupied him in his spare time.

Hofmann composed his first work, a Mazurka, when he was four. Of the two works presented here, The Sanctuary was first published under the pseudonym of Michel Dvorsky, a young invalid composer Hofmann claimed to have discovered living as a recluse in the South of France. Hofmann performed several Dvorsky scores, including the large-scale Chromaticon for Piano and Orchestra. Before long, public and critics questioned the existence of this mystery composer. Hofmann, a great prankster, enjoyed the hoax. "Is it not delicious?" he wrote to his wife. "I think it is great fun."

The enormously effective virtuoso piece Kaleidoscope was from the first issued under Hofmann's name, and he played it often in public, as does Shura Cherkassky.

Throughout his career Hofmann performed the music of his teacher Moszkowski (1854-1925) who had studied with the important pianist-pedagogue Theodor Kullak, who had, like Liszt and Leschetizky, studied with Czerny.

The best of Moszkowski's salon music is of high calibre. He had a marvellous gift for composing music that seems moulded to the hand. Paderewski once pronounced Moszkowski to be the most pianistic of any composer. Living in Paris in his last years, Moszkowski was ill and beset by poverty. A concert in Carnegie Hall on December 22, 1921 was arranged for his benefit. It was a veritable treasure-house of the Golden Age of Pianism. Harold Bauer, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, Yolando Mérö, Alexander Lambert, Rudolph Ganz, Percy Grainger, Josef Lhevinne, Ernest Schelling, Ignaz Friedman, Germaine Schnitzer and Sigismund Stojowski all took part in a multi-piano spectacle.

The pieces on this CD are among the most enduring of Moszkowski's music. The Juggleress, Op. 52, No. 4 is a graphic tonal depiction of the juggler's art. Étincelles, Op. 36, No. 6, is quite perfect; the sparks fly through a dazzling light staccato, mingled with deft passage work. The graceful Guitarra, Op. 45, No. 2, was a perennial Hofmann encore, and Caprice Éspagnol, Op. 37 is a rousing virtuoso piece which Hofmann owned.

Ignaz Friedman, like Hofmann, was born in Podgorze. At the age of ten he was accepted to study with the best teacher in Cracow, Flora Grzywinska. At eighteen he went to the University of Leipzig to study with the renowned theorist Hugo Riemann. After a year he was restless to develop his piano playing and travelled to Vienna, hoping to work with the celebrated Leschetizky who at first discouraged the young musician. Leschetizky, a great teacher-psychologist had, on purpose, discouraged several prospective pupils. However, in very little time Friedman became one of his favourites. Indeed having all the hallmarks of what Leschetizky most wanted in a pianist: an all-encompassing technique, beauty of tone, poetic feeling and great projection in large halls.

After his Vienna début in 1904 performing the Liszt E flat, Tchaikovsky B flat minor and the Brahms D minor Concertos, Friedman was launched on a career that took him to the four corners of the world. A chamber-music advocate, he played in trios, accompanied singers, performed with many violinists like Hubay, Elman, Auer and Huberman. A great concerto performer, he was soloist with Monteux, Nikisch, Ansermet, Mengelberg, Walter, Ysaÿe, to name a few. From Egypt to Iceland, from South and Central America and Mexico to Japan where his success was far-reaching, Friedman became one of the great headliners of the period. The late Danish pianist Gunnar Johansen heard him often when Friedman made his home in Copenhagen during the first war, saying, "It was colossal... He had an individuality like nobody else - nobody plays like Friedman." Vladimir Horowitz thought him fabulous, telling this writer that, "Rakhmaninov was 'crazy' about Friedman's playing, but he could be guilty of playing to the gallery." In Friedman's recorded output on occasion he manages vulgarity, or even dullness, but mostly his recorded legacy is astounding - reckless, often humorously tongue-in-cheek, and at times ravishingly poetic. His technique was as natural as breathing, and in certain technical realms, such as the kingdom of double-notes, he was incomparable. One may say with confidence that of all the mighty technicians of the Leschetizky school, Friedman was never bettered.

Of a New York recital, the renowned critic Deems Taylor wrote, "This stubby, grey man has a piano technique so utterly complete that his playing does not even seem effortless. He sits at the piano, exerting himself just about as much as would appear seemly in a good average player, and out of the instrument comes such sounds as it seems impossible for any pair of human hands to evoke - glittering scales that approach, flash by and disappear with the speed of lightning and yet are so cleanly fingered that every note is clear and round; runs in sixths, trills in thirds, chords that blare like trumpets, arpeggios that are like a caress, and never for a moment technique for its own sake."

In all he performed for forty-one years, until 1943 when crippling rheumatism afflicted his left hand, ending a career in which he played almost 3,000 concerts. On January 26, 1948 he died in Sydney, Australia. Friedman left over 100 piano pieces, mostly romantic character-pieces, fascinating in their highly-polished pianism. On this CD he is represented by Nos. 1-4 of Six Viennese Dances on Themes written by his friend Eduard GÀrtner, an Austrian baritone and singing teacher. Friedman transformed the tunes into nostalgic and elegant waltz settings, each played with delectable nonchalance. Two other Friedmann pieces are the highly original Estampes and the fetching Elle Danse (She Dances) dedicated to, and often danced to, by the legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova. On this disc Friedman too makes his bow to Moszkowski in the once popular Serenata.

Ignaz Jan Paderewski was born on November 6, 1860 in Podolia, an isolated region of the Russian partition of Poland. As a child he had two dreams: to become a pianist and to be of service to Poland. Both dreams would be fulfilled far beyond his wildest expectation.

Patriotism was engendered early, especially knowing his father was in prison for a time because of participation in the failed 1863 Polish uprising against the Czar. The boy's early piano teachers were poor and ineffective, and Paderewski later complained, "I did not know how to practice. I did not get even the first rudiments of piano technique." At twelve he was taken to Warsaw where he worked diligently, learning harmony, piano and attempting to play flute and trombone. By sixteen he was composing, but he was still dissatisfied with his work at the piano. Half-heartedly he finished his studies at the Institute of Music, receiving his diploma in 1878, for which he performed with the school orchestra the still new Grieg Concerto.

Forced to earn a living, the eighteen-year old youth taught, wrote some piano pieces, and two years later completed his Violin Sonata which five years later Brahms, reading through it, called, "a very effective, very fine concert sonata."

The twenty-year old musician had fallen in love with Antonina Korsak, and the impoverished couple married in January of 1880, with a child born to them in October of that year. After a terrible child-birth his beloved young bride died, leaving Paderewski with a crippled son who lived until he was twenty. After providing for the infant's care, Paderewski settled in Berlin, studying with the distinguished composer Friedrich Kiel. It was through the kindness of his fellow Pole, Moritz Moszkowski, that his compositions were recommended to the publisher Bock. In Berlin he played for Anton Rubinstein who saw promise in his music, but told him that he played like a composer and must work on his technique. Rubinstein had fired his repressed ambition to be a pianist.

Back in Poland he had become friends with the famed actress Modjeska, who thought there was something special in his playing. She encouraged him to prepare a recital in Cracow, where she too would appear reading poetry between the musical selections. The recital, through her appearance, was a financial success; earning enough money for him to go to Vienna with the object of obtaining lessons from Leschetizky.

After the audition Leschetizky roared, "It is too late! Too late! You cannot become a great pianist, because you have wasted your time studying perhaps more pleasant things for yourself, such as counterpoint, orchestration, and so on." But the twenty-four year old composer was not to be thwarted, convincing the piano teacher that he would persevere. With practically no repertoire, he soon found out how weak and undisciplined his fingers were. But he worked, as few are capable of working. Paderewski bloomed in the hot-house atmosphere of the Leschetizky atelier, also studying technique with Annette Essipova, Leschetizky's wife and the future teacher of Prokofiev and Simon Barère.

Leschetizky was to find out that "there was no remark so insignificant, no detail so small, as to deserve less than his whole passionate attention," soon realising that his pupil had "a great heart, a great head and an immeasurably strong will." Continuing to compose when he could, he wrote the Seven Pieces Op. 14 titled Humoresques de Concert, No. 1 being the Minuet a l'antique, which would become one of the all-time best-selling pieces of sheet music. The Minuet was at first popularised by Essipova, who also gave the prèmiere of Paderewski's A minor Concerto, fittingly dedicated to Leschetizky.

After four years of heart-rendering drudgery, usually practising from eight to twelve hours a day, Paderewski decided on Paris for his début. The concert was an unprecedented success; Paderewski, at twenty-eight possessing a unique glamour and indefinable allure, instantly became the darling of Parisian high society. Because of his amazing mane of reddish-blond hair he was promptly called the Lion of Paris. The concert offers poured in, but his repertoire was small, forcing him into a never-ending battle with practising, which he faced with fortitude throughout his long life.

Soon he conquered England, and by 1891 Queen Victoria commanded him to Windsor Castle, writing in her diary, "Paderewski played quite marvellously, such power, such tender feeling. I think he is quite equal to Rubinstein." Later that year, under the auspices of the Steinway piano firm, he sealed his fame with a triumphant American tour. From that time Paderewski and the piano were inseparable, becoming the greatest pianistic box office attraction of all time, making more money than any pianist had ever thought possible, and bringing piano music to more people than anyone before him.

Year after year he toured in the style of a prince, including a private railway car, but throughout these hectic years he never forgot his native land. To the millions of American-Poles who looked up to him, he became the symbol of their unfortunate country. Paderewski's other boyhood dream was soon to take on reality with the great war. Through those tragic and trying years he honed his considerable and magnetic gift as an orator, raising great amounts of money for his nation. By the war's end Paderewski was not only a Polish hero but a world leader, assuming the premiership of a Free Polish Republic in January 1919, signing for his country at the Versailles Peace Conference later that year.

After nearly two brutal years as Premier, he stepped aside in December 1920. After several years of absence from the keyboard, he once again resumed his world tours. Paderewski was now more than a pianist, he had become a humanitarian and a beloved inspirational force. Where ever he went he was cheered.

In September 1939 Poland's downfall brought the exhausted pianist-patriot to the United States where he was able to provide continuing and valuable service to his country. The man who had earned millions had given it away in cause after cause, dying almost penniless. President Roosevelt, a great admirer, gave him a proper hero's funeral at Washington's Arlington National Cemetery.

Paderewski was a gifted composer. His last work, the eighty-minute B minor Symphony (1907) offers epic moments with long stretches of tedium. The work lacks self-criticism. His three-act opera Manru was premièred at the Metropolitan Opera in 1903. It was received with polite applause and quickly dropped for ever. Paderewski's best music is for the piano, and the Polish Fantasy and Concerto are colourfully vibrant, the slow movement of the Concerto especially appealing in its intimate lyricism. The large solo piano works, a set of Variations and Fugue, Op. 11 is somewhat clumsy, and the E-flat minor Sonata, Op. 21, although rather over-worked was thought by its composer to be his finest piano work.

However, it is in the small genre pieces that Paderewski truly shines. This remarkable disc includes brilliant performances of some of his most enjoyable smaller works, including of course the Minuet, but the Caprice (in the Style of Scarlatti,) Op. 14, No. 2 is dashing. The Melodie, Op. 8, No. 3 was once often played and is precious. The Cracovienne Fantastique is spicy with its national colour. Op. 16, No. 4, the B flat Nocturne was often on a Paderewski programme, and was a favourite of his. He recorded it in July 1922, and was delighted with the piano roll, saying , "It is exactly the way I play my Nocturne, and the way I should like it to be played always. It is perfect." The final selection here is the meltingly beautiful Légende in A flat, Op. 16, No. 1.


© 1995 David Dubal

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