Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938)
Walzermasken
"The
superman of piano playing", "a pianist for pianists", "the
greatest technician of all time", "the ultimate phenomenon" -
those are some of the epithets applied to Leopold Godowsky. Regrettably his
concern with perfection and his innate shyness inhibited his public
performances and his recordings, and the transcendental magnificence of his
playing was revealed fully only to those who were fortunate enough to hear him
in the privacy of his own studio. Godowsky was a giant of the Golden Age, in
company with Rachmaninov, Lhevinne, Rosenthal, Friedman and Moiseiwitsch. No
less a figure than the great Hofmann proclaimed it a tragedy that the public
never heard Godowsky play as only he could. He was indeed one of the most
remarkable pianists who ever lived.
Amazingly,
Godowsky was in large part self-taught. Born in Soshly, near Vilnius in
present-day Lithuania on 13th February 1870, he began to study the violin at
the age of three, but before long his true aptitude for the piano became
apparent. There is a story that at the age of four, without any piano lessons,
he played correctly a selection from Martha which he had heard only once -
played by the regimental band a full year before! His musical training in Vilnius
was scant and sporadic. Even so, by the age of seven he was composing his own
pieces, and remarkably he used many of his early musical ideas again in his
mature compositions. When nine years old he made his public début, and that
recital led eventually to a tour through Poland and Germany. In Königsberg,
Godowsky attracted the attention of a wealthy banker named Feinburg, through
whose generosity he entered the Berlin Hochschule für Musik at the age of
thirteen for two years' study. Among his teachers were the composer Woldemar
Bargiel (1828-1897), who was Clara Schumann's half-brother, and the
pianist-composer Ernst Rudorff (1840-1916), who was a friend of Brahms.
Leaving
Berlin, he made his American début in Boston on 7th December 1884 and embarked
in 1886 on a tour of Canada with the Belgian violinist Ovide Musin. The
following three years were spent mostly in Paris, where Godowsky became known
as a protégé of Saint-Saëns and played in society salons, and in London, where
he played a command performance for the royal family. The next decade found him
back in America, associated with important music schools in New York,
Philadelphia and Chicago. He took American citizenship and married Frieda Saxe
in 1891. (Their son, incidentally, was the co-inventor of the Kodachrome colour
process.)
A
momentous occasion in Godowsky's life was the recital in Berlin on 6th December
1900, when he became overnight one of the world's greatest pianists. Already
known by reputation to the German capital's pianistic circles, Godowsky was
nevertheless a new name to the public and the critics. He faced the concert
with trepidation, fearing popular success and critical defeat or vice versa,
not to mention an antisemitic press and professional jealousies. After playing
the Brahms B flat concerto to his "absolute satisfaction," he
proceeded to conquer the audience, in which all of Berlin's musical luminaries
were in attendance, with seven of his own Chopin paraphrases and his
arrangement of Weber's Invitation to the Dance. The pianists de Pachmann,
Weiss, Hambourg and Foerster, according to Godowsky's account, "went
mad" along with the rest of the audience, and Godowsky lost count of the
curtain calls after the paraphrases. The success was greater than any he had
ever witnessed; not even Paderewski had generated such enthusiasm. The rest of
the concert consisted of a similarly inspired performance of the Tchaikovsky B
flat minor concerto and two encores. The critics were unanimous in their
praise. "Nobody ever got such notices," Godowsky recalled, adding
that no musician present could ever remember a more sensational success.
Suddenly
Berlin had two keyboard giants - Godowsky and Busoni - and they busied
themselves each one trying to outdo the other. Godowsky remained in Berlin, teaching
there, until 1909, when he accepted a professorship in advanced studies at the
Akademie der Tonkunst in Vienna. At the outbreak of World War I he setlied
permanently in America. During a recording session of Chopin's Nocturnes in
London in 1930, Godowsky suffered a stroke that cost him the use of his right
arm and abruptly ended his concert career. He continued to compose until his
death in New York on 21st November 1938.
Everything
that Godowsky achieved as a technician and an interpretative artist was
embodied in his own compositions and transcriptions. He made a firm distinction
between virtuosity (the mechanics of piano playing that "any fool can
learn") and technique (which he defined as everything that makes for
artistry - fingering, phrasing, pedalling, dynamics, agogics, time and rhythm).
He described his style of composition as a personal one with involved inner
voices, complex counterpoint and polyrhythms and novel sonorities. As much as
he was fascinated by technical matters, he placed greater importance on emotion
("the prime requisite of art"), which nevertheless needs the guidance
of knowledge and intelligence. He claimed never to have written a note that he
did not feel and described his music as self-revelation through sound.
It
used to be said that Godowsky composed for a future generation of pianists,
since his works - both the original ones and the transcriptions - were of such
difficulty that only he could play them. Even today the Fitty - Three Studies
on Chopin's Etudes must be regarded as among the most difficult pieces ever
written for the piano. They are fantastic elaborations that far exceed the
demands that even Liszt had made of his players. Several, including the
"Revolutionary" étude, are recast tor the left hand alone. One,
retitled "Badinage", combines simultaneously the "Black
Key" étude in the left hand and the "Butterfly" étude in the
right! Anticipating cries of heresy in his treatment of Chopin, Godowsky
defended in a foreword to the published edition his intention to expand the
piano's polyphonic, polyrhythmic, polydynamic and coloristic possibilities.
Certainly he achieved a transcendental quality that exalts the instrument in a
manner unsurpassed since Liszt.
The
other transcriptions include the Symphonic Metamorphoses on Johann Strauss's
Waltzes (which are of legendary difficulty but modest compared to the Chopin
studies), paraphrases on Weber's Invitation to the Dance and Perpetuum mobile,
arrangements of three each of Bach's solo suites for violin and cello, a set of
a dozen Schubert songs, and Renaissance - two sets of twenty-four dance pieces
by Rameau, Corelli, Lully and Dandrieu.
Among
Godowsky's original compositions are an exhaustively contrapuntal,
five-movement Sonata in E Minor, several concert études and anumber of smaller
pieces. Best known of the original works is Triakontameron, a suite of thirty
tone pictures whence comes the graceful, nostalgic "Alt Wien". A
concert tour of Asia provided the inspiration for the Java Suite, twelve sketches
that echo the exotic Indonesian gamelan music. The Suite for the Left Hand
Alone, Six Waltz Poems and Prelude and Fugue bring to mind another of
Godowsky's epithets: "the Apostle of the Left Hand". His few works
for two pianos afford ample opportunity for contrapuntal and sonorous
exploitation, and the set of Forty-Six Miniatures for four hands is a
remarkable pedagogical cycle for student and teacher. Besides piano music
Godowsky composed songs and the Twelve Impressions for violin and piano -
arrangements of selected Walzermasken and two movements of the sonata, made for
his friends Fritz and Harriet Kreisler in 1916 as a token of a vanishing world.
Walzermasken
was composed in 1911 and comprises twenty-four fantasies in tripie time,
intended to be heard as a cycle. Played without interruptions, it lasts about
an hour. Although Godowsky did not oppose the idea of playing a selection of
movements as the occasion warranted, he urged the pianist to take variety into
consideration when making his choices. He also stressed the importance of
careful and mature pedalling and suggested that attention to the tonic note,
harmony and innervoices serve as a general guide to the performer . For a
composer of lesser talent, such a cycle could easily degenerate into tedium. The
variety of the Walzermasken is eloquent testimony to Godowsky's imaginative
powers.
Whether
by chance or design, the Walzermasken seem to fall into several sub-groups
within the large cycle. An air of delicious nostalgia pervades the first three
pieces: the bold "Karneval" (1) that begins the cycle, the
harmonically delicate "Pastell" (2) and the rhythmically complex
"Skizze" (3). The next two pieces are independent: a brief, playful
"Momento capriccioso" (4) and a calm "Berceuse" (5). The
spirit of Chopin hovers over the next three pieces, which seem to form a
triptych: the showy "Kontraste" (6), the moderately paced
"Profil" (7) and the sornewhat dramatic "Silhouette" (8).
The feeling changes markedly in the next three pieces, which are decidedly
Gallic and form a set of elegant, Ravel-like waltzes, comprising
"Satire" (9), "Karikatur" (10) and "Tyll
Ulenspegel" (11 ). "Legende" (12) re-establishes a romantic
Central European flavour, and Chopin's influence dominates the next six
numbers: a fantasy-filled "Humoreske" (13), the salonish
"Französisch" (14), a melancholy, cascading "Elegie" (15),
a surprisingly melodious "Perpetuurn mobile" (16), an attractive
"Menuett" (17) and the whimsical "Schuhplattler" (18). The
final six pieces exhibitgreaterdiversity. The heavy, lugubrious "Valse
macabre" (19) breathes an air of tragedy. "Abendglocken" (20) is
a tone picture bordering on impressionism; distinguished by a lovely melody,
this second-largest piece of the cycle creates a peaceful atmosphere suggestive
of evening bells. The same sort of delicacy infuses the introspective
"Orientale" (21) with its veiled hints of the East.
"Wienerisch" (22) evokes the Viennese waltz, but as Chopin might have
done. A sombre contrast is found in "Eine Sage" (23), partially notated
on three staves, with its restrained, narrative quality. It is only fitting
that the vast cycle should end with a homage to the Waltz King himself, and
"Portrait (Joh. S.)" (24) is the largest and most elaborate piece of
all - one wherein Strauss's melodic gift and Godowsky's technical prowess meet.
Ilona
Prunyi
Ilona
Prunyi was born in Debrecen in 1941 and studied at the Liszt Academy in
Budapest, distinguishing herself in the Liszt-Bart6k Competition while still a
student. Her career as a concert performer was interrupted by aperiod of ill
health, and for personal reasons she spent ten years as a teacher at the
Academy before making her début in 1974. Since then she has appeared frequently
in solo and chamber music recitals and as a soloist with the principal
Hungarian orchestras.
