Bach's music became everpresent in the life of Mieczyslaw Horszowski
(1892-1993), beginning with his first piano lessons at age three
and a half. He was initially taught by his mother, who had been
a pupil of Karol Mikuli, Chopin's assistant. The earliest reference
to Horszowski's playing comes from Cyrill Kistler, the composer,
pedagogue, and friend of Richard Wagner's who was one of Horszowski's
earliest teachers. In the Leipziger Tageblatt of August 17, 1899,
Kistler wrote: "A child of seven years who can play all the
compositions of Bach by memory and without defects! I asked this
boy to transpose for me a work in minor and in other keys. How
did he play this? To marvel at!" During that same month,
the young pianist had taken part in a group recital held in Bad
Kissingen, Germany, playing a Two-Part Invention by Bach and the
Chant de l'alouette from Tchaikovsky's The Seasons.
When auditioning in 1899 for the eminent pedagogue Theodor Leschetizky
(1830-1915, a pupil of Czerny), Horszowski chose to play Bach's
B-minor French Suite and was accepted. Leschetizky entreated his
pupils to practice no more than three hours daily ("four
if you are lazy," he once conceded). This advice was well-suited
to the young boy, who was also studying violin at the time. Horszowski
settled in Vienna with his mother and sister, and remained with
Leschetizky until 1905.
While touring in Italy in 1908, the sixteen-year-old Horszowski
played for the composer and librettist Arrigo Boito, who was struck
with this major talent and soon became a friend. At the Milan
Conservatory, Horszowski performed Eugen D'Albert's transcription
of Bach's organ Passacaglia, to much acclaim.
When he moved to Paris in 1910, Horszowski frequently visited
Pablo Casals, whom he had met in 1906. In their first musical
encounter, the two had sat together at the piano and, with one
hand each, read through Bach's French Suites; then Casals played
an unaccompanied Bach Suite on the cello for Horszowski, who was
profoundly impressed. Casals soon introduced Horszowski to some
of the era's foremost musical thinkers, among them Donald Francis
Tovey, Emanuel Moor, and Jean HurÈ. When in May of 1913
Horszowski performed a group of Preludes and Fugues from Book
II of theWell-Tempered Clavier during a solo recital in Paris
at the Salle des Agriculteurs, HurÈ subsequently wrote
Horszowski his impressions of the concert, praising a Beethoven
sonata while confiding: "I understand Bach's works in a completely
different way, but offer homage to your exquisite sensibility,
your musicality and your admirable technique. It is an incontestable
mastery."
Tovey advised Horszowski to study all of Bach's keyboard works
in the Bischoff edition, as well as the Scarlatti sonatas edited
by Longo, Mozart's piano concertos, Haydn's string quartets, and
the chamber music of Brahms. During a visit to England, Tovey
brought Horszowski to Windsor Castle one evening to hear the organ
of St. George's Chapel played by Walter Parratt, who performed
Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B minor for his two guests. Years
later, Horszowski would be present in 1938 when Tovey, then Dean
of the University of Edinburgh, conferred honorary doctorates
to Casals and Albert Schweitzer, both of whom performed at the
ceremonies.
At Tovey's urging, Horszowski began learning the Bach Partitas.
After he played the Fourth (in D major) for the violinist Christian
Larapidie, his listener enthused that Horszowski was born for
such music, and that he ought to drop all other repertory and
play Bach exclusively. Contact with pathbreaking musicians continued
as Horszowski met Wanda Landowska and Adolf Busch at the home
of Casals. An important collaboration with Busch developed through
the following decades as Horszowski performed with Busch's ensemble,
once appearing as harpsichordist on their recording of a group
of Handel's Concerti Grossi.
Horszowski's repertoire eventually included most of Bach's important
works, yet for some reason he never played the Goldberg Variations
publicly. And regrettably, he made far too few recordings of Bach's
works. The English Suite No. 5 in E minor was recorded in 1950
at the first Prades Festival. After having presented Casals with
a complete set of Bach's works, Horszowski had helped influence
him to organize the Festival and return to public performance
from his self-imposed moratorium in protest of the Franco dictatorship
in Spain. The Suite was recorded again when the artist was in
his nineties, along with the French Suite in E major and the Bach-Liszt
organ Prelude and Fugue in A minor.
By 1978, the eighty-six-year-old Horszowski had completed a recording
of the entire Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier and intended
to finish Book II, when the record company abruptly canceled the
project without explanation - a great disappointment to Horszowski.
Although the first eight Preludes and Fugues had been taped to
his satisfaction, at this writing they remain lost. The D-minor
Prelude and Fugue heard here, from a recital in 1985, is one of
the rare surviving examples of Horszowski playing from Book II.
* Mieczyslaw Horszowski wrote but one essay during his life (on
Mozart, published on Arbiter CD 104). Another glimpse of his ideas
and teaching methods exists in a (recorded) lesson he gave to
his student Li Jian in 1989 at the Curtis Institute, Philadelphia,
on the G-major Partita.
Before Jian plays, Horszowski comments: "I am curious. You
said you have discovered new things." Jian replies that he
had listened to a recording of a Bach Partita, played on the harpsichord
by Wanda Landowska, and that he wishes to try a slower tempo in
the Preludio. When he begins, Horszowski interjects: "The
pedal for me changes the sonority. Wanda Landowska doesn't use
the pedal, she doesn't have it on the harpsichord." At the
end of the Preludio, Horszowski analyzes Jian's approach to the
movement: "This gives me the impression that you are playing
something written a century later than Bach, in the time of Clementi."
As Jian continues, Horszowski offers suggestions by singing aloud
phrasings, accents and syncopations, indicating where one might
briefly pause, and how to subtly manipulate touch and dynamics,
especially when approaching sectional cadences, advice which Jian
promptly incorporates in his playing.
When the Allemande commences with a slow, elegant pace, Horszowski
points out that eight beats would result rather than four, making
it necessary to adopt a faster tempo. He indicates that Bach's
treatment of these dances often required a specific touch, such
as legato or portamento in the Allemande; the Courante played
in staccato; very little staccato in the Sarabande - mostly legato
and portamento; the Passapied a mix of legato and staccato; Gavottes
and BourÈes mainly staccato, and the Gigues a combination
of various legatos and staccatos.
After working on the Allemande, Horszowski remarks, "The
next movement is the Corrente [Horszowski uses the Italian name]
and I wish you will give me the same pleasure as you did with
the Allemande." Here he suggests that a less rapid tempo,
with heavier accentuation, would result in the dance becoming
"more manly. I think this is a strong Corrente." As
Jian playes, Horszowski emphasizes the outer structure by indicating
the highly accented beats.
The Sarbande's elusive opening becomes vividly clear when Horszowski
sings out the phrasing as one would bow a string instrument. (He
once mentioned to this writer how greatly influenced he was from
having heard Casals play the Sarabandes of the cello suites.)
In the Passapied, Horszowski transforms its intricate and ornamented
opening into a simplified legato phrase, clarifying the tangle
of melodic notes and embellishments. In contrast, he demonstrates
how several consecutive left-hand figures in the Gigue which support
a right-hand theme might be accented on the first note of each
group, giving the part a double role: These flowing groups of
even notes no longer remain an accompaniment, as the accents help
expose an otherwise unsuspected layer of polyphony.
Horszowski's comments are an illuminating guide in listening to
his own interpretation of the dances. When he once mentioned the
G-major Partita to his wife Bice Costa, she noted his words in
her diary on November 6, 1988: "In me, il fraseggio canta
con violenza." (In me the phrasing sings with violence).
* Apart from the Rome performance of the Fifth Partita, all of
the works heard here were preserved from concerts given from 1983-1986
in the church of San Martino, in Castagno d'Andrea, a remote mountain
town in Tuscany's Alto Mugello region. A seasoned mountaineer,
Horszowski enjoyed the village, the church's acoustics and its
piano, and he was fond of the parish priest, Don Bruno Brezzi,
who often invited him to take part in their music series. These
circumstances provided a setting which inspired Horszowski to
play at his very best, even to revive the A-minor English Suite,
a work he had not programmed in decades: It was the final occasion
in his life when Horszowski performed a major work that he had
first played in Turin in 1919. Father Brezzi privately recorded
all of Horszowski's recitals, single-handedly preserving them
for posterity. We are grateful to him and to Bice Horszowski Costa
for their kind permission to publish these unique documents.
Note: Bice Horszowski Costa has almost completed editing Horszowski's
diaries and his family's correspondence, which will be published
in Italian and English editions.
Allan Evans C1998