Everything about Wanda Landowska totally explained
Wanda Landowska (
July 5,
1879 –
August 16,
1959), was a
Polish (later a naturalized
French citizen)
harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. She was the first person to record
Bach's Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord (1931).
Landowska was born in
Warsaw, where her father was a lawyer, and her mother a linguist who translated
Mark Twain into
Polish. She began playing
piano at the age of four, and studied at the
Warsaw Conservatory with
Jan Kleczynski and
Aleksander Michałowski. She also studied composition with
Heinrich Urban in Berlin. After marrying the Polish
folklorist Henry Lew in 1900 in
Paris, she taught piano at the
Schola Cantorum there (1900-1912).
She later taught harpsichord at the
Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1912-1919). Deeply interested in
musicology, and particularly in the works of Bach,
Couperin and
Rameau, she toured the museums of Europe looking at original keyboard instruments; she acquired old instruments and had new ones made at her request by
Pleyel and Company. These were large, heavily-built harpsichords with a 16-foot stop (a set of strings an octave below normal pitch) and owed much to piano construction. (These instruments have largely fallen out of fashion in the past four decades.)
Responding to criticism by fellow harpsichordist
Rosalyn Tureck, she once said: "You play Bach your way, and I'll play him
his way."
A number of important new works were written for her:
Manuel de Falla's
El retablo de maese Pedro marked the return of the harpsichord to the modern orchestra. Falla later wrote a harpsichord concerto for her, and
Francis Poulenc composed his
Concert champêtre for her.
She established the
École de Musique Ancienne at Paris in 1925: from 1927, her home in
Saint-Leu-la-Forêt became a center for the performance and study of old music. When
Germany invaded France, the
Jewish Landowska escaped with her assistant and companion
Denise Restout, leaving Saint-Leu in
1940, sojourning in southern
France, and finally sailing from
Lisbon to the
United States. She arrived in
New York on
December 7,
1941. The house in Saint-Leu was looted, and her instruments and manuscripts stolen, so she arrived in the United States essentially without assets. She settled in
Lakeville, Connecticut in
1949 and re-established herself as a performer and teacher in the United States, touring extensively. Her
life companion Denise Restout was editor and translator of her writings on music, including
Musique ancienne, and
Landowska on Music.
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