Although Wanda Alexandra Landowska left us on August 16,1959, her music is as alive today as it was in the early part of the 20th century. Polish by birth, she was a pianist and harpsichordist who studied at the Warsaw Conservatory with Alexander Michalowski (piano), and Jan Kleczynski, the author of The Works of Chopin and Their Proper Interpretation.
From an early age Landowska worshipped at the feet of the great German master Johann Sebastian Bach, and in later years recorded his complete Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues at her home in Lakeville, Connecticut, where she lived with her assistant Denise Restout.
Many pupils came through the doors of this house, most notably the British pianist Clifford Curzon, who worked with both Landowska and Restout. ("Landowska on Music," by Denise Restout, Stein and Day, New York, 1964).
Henri Lew
In 1900 Landowska eloped with the Polish journalist and actor Henri Lew, who also was an ethnologist specializing in Hebrew folklore. It was to his credit that when Wanda wished to settle down and have a family, Lew dissuaded her, saying that she had too much to give to the world in her music to abandon it.
Lew died some years later after a motor accident which Landowska witnessed. With Lew, she had written Musique Ancienne, which formed the basis of the book Landowska on Music, by Denise Restout.
Landowska enjoyed her years in Lakeville, where she taught, prepared her many concert programs and entertained at one time the French Ambassador. Wanda Landowska was the recipient of the Legion d'Honneur for her contribution to the world of music, as well as many other awards and recognitions.
A wonderful interpreter of the Baroque masters, Landowska often played Chopin in the privacy of her Connecticut home. When begged by friends to play Chopin in public she refused, preferring instead to keep this little bit of Poland to herself. It was her precious link with the early days in Warsaw which she could not bring herself to share with the world.
Denise Restout
After the death of Landowska in1959, Denise Restout began an annual musical afternoon on the anniversary, which continued for many years. Here, in the house on a hill, many students from different countries would gather and the house would ring with conversations in English, French and Polish.
One after another the students would approach the piano or harpsichord and begin to play some Bach or Couperin to the delight of the non-performing guests.
Wanda Landowska was a great musician and a great woman...but perhaps more important she was a very simple woman who found never-ending delight in walking alone through the Connecticut countryside.
She asked very little from life, gave untiringly to her pupils and her public, and never ceased to be filled with wonder at her great fame and prestige.
It is fitting that such a woman should take her place beside the giants of Polish musical history, not only for her keyboard virtuosity but for the tremendous part she played in the renaissance of the long forgotten harpsichord as a vital member of the family of concert instruments. ( "A House on a Hill," Poland Magazine, 1972).
For further information on women in music see:
 |
 |
