Harpsichord Playing in America “after” Landowska

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Guilty Pleasures: Reading, Listening, and Viewing

Recreational reading and several reissued recordings from the middle of the 20th century are recommended for pleasure, guilty or innocent:

The Soprano Wore Falsettos by Mark Schweizer (Hopkinsville, KY: St. James Music Press, 2006; ISBN 0-9721211-6-1)
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The fourth in Schweizer’s madcap series of liturgical mysteries regales readers with another adroit mingling of a Raymond Chandleresque typewritten tale presented within the story of churchly shenanigans at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in St. Germaine, North Carolina.
The current volume includes shoe polishing for Maundy Thursday (a contemporary worship successor to traditional foot washing); a Pirate Eucharist in which “Arrgh! Alleluia’s” abound; a restaurant called Buxtehooters; references to compositions by Scarlatti, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Fauré, Froberger, Beethoven, and Casals, with German beer, Fräuleins, AND a three-manual Flentrop organ [page 112!] for “local” color. Not to be overlooked is a fortuitously named character, the substitute organist Mrs. Agnes Day. Highly recommended for readers struggling with the demands of the Lenten season. And others.

Choices: A Novel by Paul Wolfe (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2006; ISBN 0-86534-485-X) (telephone: 800/243-5644 for orders).
During several conversations with the author of Choices, he described his forthcoming book as “Jane Austen with sex,” and this entertainingly wicked publication delivers on this promise. Wolfe’s story is set in Italy, primarily at the international music festival of “Lospello,” where devoted manager Ricardo Ricci keeps things on an even keel. Keeping a relationship with his longtime companion and love Katherine presents the other major challenge of Ricardo’s life. Adding George, a young and comely narcissist, to the festival’s management staff stirs the erotic mix to boiling, and beyond. Sly commentaries on the music festival scene vie with various steamy couplings to keep readers turning the pages. A harpsichordist, the fresh toy for the festival’s maestro Gianfranco Connery, makes a timely appearance [page 368]. Recommended for mature readers only.
Paul Wolfe, Texas born, studied harpsichord with Wanda Landowska together with compadre Rafael Puyana from 1955 until Madame’s death in 1959. During these years he recorded a number of solo harpsichord discs for the Experiences Anonymes label. A few years later, upon the closing of the recording company, these tapes were purchased by Lyrichord Records. Wolfe’s discs, offering splendid playing on an early, pre-Landowska-model Pleyel harpsichord and on his Rutkowski and Robinette nine-foot instrument with sub-unison stop, have been reissued by Lyrichord in two compact disc albums entitled When They Had Pedals, comprising works by Frescobaldi along with English keyboard music from the Tudor Age to the Restoration [LEMS-8033] and six Handel Suites (numbers 3, 8, 11, 13, 14, and 15) [LEMS-8034].

By the legendary Landowska herself, two recordings from her American years have been combined in one compact disc for the Testament label (SBT 1380): Wanda Landowska: Dances of Poland and A Treasury of Harpsichord Music. Originally entitledLandowska Plays for Paderewski (the noted pianist was, late in life, prime minister of Poland), Landowska’s program includes a wide-ranging variety of unusual pieces: short works by Michal Kleofas Oginski, Jacob le Polonais, Diomedes Cato, Landowska herself, and the iconic national composer Fryderyk Chopin (Mazurka in C, opus 56, number 2). If there were ever any doubt about the harpsichordist’s Polish roots, her magisterial rhythmic control in these essential ethnic offerings would squelch any possible argument to the contrary.
Not the least part of the enjoyment provided by this compilation comes from new and original comments in an essay by British harpsichordist Jane Clark. She presents a fresh perspective on two selections by Rameau (Air grave pour les deux Polonois) and François Couperin (Air dans le goût Polonois), noting that the 18th-century French did not think highly of their neighbor nation’s chivalric etiquette, thus suggesting that these short pieces might be satirical rather than adulatory.
The second program on this disc was issued originally in 1957 as a collection of short works recorded at various venues during the year 1946. Highlights include Couperin’s Les Barricades Mistérieuses and L’Arlequine, Handel’s “Harmonious Blacksmith” Variations from the Great Suite in E Major, two welcome Mozart miniatures, plus the longer Rondo in D, K. 485 (splendid reminders of Landowska’s lovely way with the Salzburg master, more often played by her on the piano than the harpsichord), and ending with a signature performance of Bach’s Vivaldi arrangement (Concerto in D, BWV 972), at the end of which, loathe to depart, she iterates again and again, in descending registers, the third movement’s signature motive—an idiosyncratic and unforgettable addition to Bach’s transcription.

Viewing Landowska: Uncommon Visionary, a 57-minute documentary by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Diane Pontius first issued on video tape in 1997, should be required of all who prize the harpsichord revival. Now available in DVD format (VAI DVD 4246), the new issue has more than 50 minutes of additional material, including all the extant footage of Landowska playing the harpsichord, and an audio-only reissue of her November 1933 first recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (made in Paris). The reminiscences from several now-departed major figures who knew Landowska intimately—especially her longtime companion Denise Restout; friend, Polish singer Doda Conrad; and recording engineer John Pfeiffer—are irreplaceable and especially illuminating as the great 20th-century harpsichordist’s life recedes ever further into history. It is delightful, as well, to see some younger images of other commentators in the documentary—Alice Cash, Skip Sempé, Willard Martin, and, yes, this writer—as we appeared and sounded in the waning years of the past millennium. But the major impact of this video disc stems from Landowska’s inimitable playing, reminding us again and again why she became (and, for many, remains) the preferred exponent of that strange and wonderful instrument she toiled so assiduously to revive, THE HARPSICHORD.

Send news items or comments about Harpsichord News to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275; .

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton Early keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

Memory
This month I will write about memorization. More precisely, I will introduce a discussion of memorization with two other related performance issues: sight-reading and looking (or not looking) at the keys. These three matters, considered together, provide an interesting and important take on what it means to have learned a piece of music and then to perform that piece. Most of this discussion will take place next month, however, since I want to borrow much of this month’s column for another purpose. This month marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the great keyboard performers, scholars, and teachers of the twentieth century—harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick. I want to begin with a tribute to him in honor of that occasion.

Ralph Kirkpatrick
Ralph Kirkpatrick was born on June 10, 1911, in North Leominster, Massachusetts, an area where, in the years when he was growing up, it was possible to hear a lot of good music in concert—after all, this was still an era when people heard most music live rather than through recordings. In his memoir Early Years—about which I will say more below—Kirkpatrick mentions having heard, among others, the singer Amelita Galli-Curci, pianists Sergei Rachmaninoff and Harold Bauer, violinist Jacques Thibauld, and the Flonzaley Quartet. He also notes that the quality and variety of music played by less-renowned performers and by local performing ensembles, especially choral societies, was extraordinary.
During this time he avidly studied piano, and was interested in the widest possible variety of music, acquiring scores of then very new works by, for example, Debussy and Ravel. Kirkpatrick arrived at Harvard University as a freshman in 1927 completely absorbed by music. It was there that, by utter chance, he discovered the harpsichord: a Dolmetsch/Chickering instrument that had recently been donated to the university. The first harpsichord sounds that Ralph Kirkpatrick ever heard were those of jazz played by a music faculty member who happened to have sat down at that instrument when Kirkpatrick was in the room. He was intrigued enough to seek out the opportunity to play the instrument, and that set the course of his career.

Concert performer
Ralph Kirkpatrick’s career comprised concert performance, recording, scholarship, and teaching. The latter two came together in his writings. As a concert performer Kirkpatrick was a pioneer: not the first ever to play on the harpsichord, but one of the first, and easily the most widely noticed after Landowska. He gave his first harpsichord recital at a meeting of the Harvard Music Club in May 1930. Already by the late 1930s, in his twenties, he was giving well-heralded concerts in what was then called Carnegie Chamber Music Hall (now Weill Recital Hall). He was a strong presence on the concert stage through the 1960s, performing in specialized “early music” venues such as Williamsburg, mainstream venues (he was the first harpsichordist to play at Alice Tully Hall, for example), and on festival stages and concert stages throughout the world.
Although most of Kirkpatrick’s concert performance was as a harpsichord soloist, he also performed as a soloist on both clavichord and fortepiano, and, especially in his early years, as a chamber musician. He also was a frequent performer of the Bach harpsichord concerti. In about 1974, health problems forced Kirkpatrick to withdraw for a while from the concert stage. By the time his general health had stabilized to the point where he was able to consider resuming concert activity, he had completely lost his sight. At this point he decided that, rather than give up performing, he would take a new approach to playing: one that relied on his very strong memory and large, well-learned repertoire, but that also required him to play utterly unassisted by even any peripheral glimpses of the keyboards.
I was fortunate enough to be in the audience at his return concert on September 25, 1977 at Sprague Hall on the campus of Yale University. It was a vivid and exciting performance, and his decision to return to the concert stage at this juncture in his life struck me at the time (and still does today) as an act of great courage and dedication. This concert ushered in a final flowering of his work as a performer that lasted about four years and culminated in a recital at the first Boston Early Music Festival.

Recordings
Kirkpatrick’s recording career also began early in his life. In 1937 he recorded music of Bach—the Italian Concerto, the Ricercar a 3 voci from the Musical Offering, and the G-major Partita—for the now long-defunct Musicraft label (for which, by the way, the organist Carl Weinrich also recorded Bach, although it was primarily a jazz label). In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of the most prolific recording artists, most famously recording Scarlatti for Columbia and Bach for Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft and DGG’s Archiv Production. The culmination of this latter series of recordings was a double trip through both books of the Well-tempered Clavier—first on harpsichord, then on clavichord. Many critics and listeners consider the clavichord half of this tour de force to be Kirkpatrick’s finest recording. He also recorded Mozart solo piano music on a restored 18th-century piano, Mozart concerti with several different ensembles, Haydn songs with mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel, sonatas of Handel and Mozart with violinist Alexander Schneider, a certain amount of twentieth-century music, and various other things. Unfortunately, very few of Ralph Kirkpatrick’s recordings are in print as of this writing. Of course, this is always subject to change.

Scholarship
The most renowned aspect of Kirkpatrick’s scholarship was his work on Domenico Scarlatti. When he published his biography of Scarlatti in 1953, it was received as a work of great importance. The book concerns itself not only with Scarlatti’s life but also with his music, with the culture in which his music was created, and indeed with aspects of the overall history of that time and place. It served as a model for serious, accurate scholarship about matters bearing on music and musical performance. Indeed, Kirkpatrick, in the preface to the book, suggests that part of his own interest in taking on what became a long and difficult project was that he “had become painfully aware of the inadequacy of the available texts and the absence of information fundamentally necessary to me as a performer of his works.”
Nowadays we take it for granted that a performer needs information. This was not an idea that Kirkpatrick invented from scratch, by any means, but the thoroughness and common sense with which he carried out the Scarlatti project helped to advance the notion that artistic interpretive work can be enhanced greatly by historical knowledge. It did not hurt that the book was very well written: engaging and clear, a pleasure to read.
Other writings of Kirkpatrick’s include the well-known preface to his edition of Sixty Sonatas by Scarlatti—written in a question and answer format and giving a lot of food for thought about interpretation and performance—and articles and reviews touching upon subjects such as clavichord playing, Bach’s dynamics, Couperin’s L’Art de toucher le claveçin, and many others. Two books of his—the memoir Early Years and Interpreting Bach’s Well-tempered clavier: A performer’s discourse of method—were published shortly after his death. The first of these is my favorite of his writings. It covers some of his family history, his childhood and early musical education, his time at Harvard, and his year in Europe immediately following his graduation from college. Written with great craftsmanship, it is also heartfelt, informal, and engaging. Much of it deals directly with music, but not all of it—Kirkpatrick talks about his relationships with his parents, and other family, for example, with candor and insight. Almost every line provides something to think about. The second half of the book consists of the journal that Kirkpatrick kept of his trip to Europe in 1931–32, during which he studied with Wanda Landowska, among others.

Teaching
Ralph Kirkpatrick first taught as an undergraduate, when he gave some piano lessons to other students to help support himself. Later he taught briefly at Bennington College, and then, in 1940, joined the faculty of Yale University, from which he retired in 1976. Among his students at Yale were harpsichordists Albert Fuller, Fernando Valenti, Frederick Hammond, William Christie, Martin Pearlman, Mark Kroll, Louis Bagger, Howard Schott, Blandine Verlet, Seymour Hayden, and Richard Rephann, among many others, Duke University organist Robert Parkins, and musicians whose careers have been in fields other than keyboard playing, such as oboist Allan Vogel and guitarist Eliot Fisk.
Ralph Kirkpatrick was an exciting and path-breaking performer and one of the seminal influences on the early music movement and on the history of keyboard playing in the twentieth century. He died on April 13, 1984. It is an honor to remember him on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Memorization and sight-reading
Memorization, sight-reading, and looking or not looking at the hands and feet are three aspects of playing that are inextricably intertwined with one another. Some facets of these relationships are as follows:
1) If a piece is really, fully memorized, then the performer—rather obviously—does not need to read any music in performance.
2) If a player is a perfect sight-reader who can play pieces at first sight with the kind of accuracy and security that I and other mere mortals have to practice hard to achieve, then that player—at least for purely practical purposes—does not need to remember even the next note, let alone the whole piece.
3) Memorization and sight-reading, even though they are in a sense opposites, are both often considered essential hallmarks of good musicianship; for some people they even define good musicianship. They both often play a part in auditions for academic programs.
4) Good sight-reading can be a practical necessity, especially in circumstances involving accompaniment; memorization is rarely of practical import.
5) Neither memorization nor sight-reading necessarily has anything to do with musical understanding or artistically convincing performance. That is not to say that either of them cannot be a part of artistically great performance, or part of the process of preparing for such a performance.
6) If a piece is really well memorized, then the eyes are, by definition, not needed to look at music, and can perhaps afford to look at the hands and feet. If a player, however, has real command of the instrument and does not need to look in order to find notes, then this looking serves more to give the eyes something to do and to keep them from inviting distraction than to assist directly in the playing.
7) If a piece is being sight-read, then it is very important that the player not look at the keyboards or the hands and feet. A player who needs to look at the hands or the feet probably cannot become even a moderately good sight-reader.
8) Everyone has some point on the spectrum of easiness and difficulty below which he or she can sight-read, and above which he or she cannot. The placement of this point determines some things about the practical side of music learning for each player, but does not determine anything about technical, musical, or artistic outcome.
9) One traditional description of the process of learning a piece of music might be that it starts with sight-reading and ends with memorization. (One way of framing a consideration of sight-reading and memorization would be to discuss how each of them relates to the parts of the learning process that fall in between these two end points. That would naturally move into a discussion of whether either or both of the end points were really necessary or useful.)
Next month I will explore some of the nuances and implications of these points—which are presented here in a somewhat oversimplified way as a starting place for discussion—and various others. I will also discuss my own relationship with memorization and with sight-reading, both as a player and as a teacher.

Pedaling the French: 

A ‘Tour de France’ of Revival Harpsichordists 1888–1939

I. Near-death and slow rebirth

“Make what you want: this upstart piano will never replace the majestic claveçin!” Thus began my 1989 book Harpsichord in America: a Twentieth-Century Revival with these combative words from the composer Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727–1799). Looking back from our historical perspective, we all know how that prediction turned out! Even for Balbastre himself: his capitulation was a work for the new “upstart” keyboard instrument, a Marche des Marseillois, “arranged for the Forte Piano by Citizen Balbastre, and dedicated to the brave defenders of the French Republic in the year 1792, the first of the Republic.” At least Citizen [Citoyen] Claude-B B survived!

Following a very few antiquarian-inspired appearances throughout the piano-dominated 19th century, the harpsichord’s return to the musical scene as a featured instrument occurred during the Paris Exhibition of 1888 at the instigation of Louis Diémer (1843–1919), a piano professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Diémer was able to borrow a 1769 Pascal Taskin harpsichord to play in several concerts comprising concerted works by Rameau and solo pieces by various French claviçinistes. Of the latter the most popular composer was Louis-Claude Daquin, whose Le Coucou became one of the most-performed works during the early harpsichord revival period.

Diémer and his concerts must have inspired the salon composer Francis Thomé (1850–1909) to write a Rigodon for this most recent French harpsichordist, and thus provide history with the very first new piece for the old instrument. Inspired by Daquin, but also meant as a tribute to Diémer’s “legendary trilling ability,” Thomé’s pièce de claveçin was published by Lemoine in 1893. Around the middle of the 20th century this work was discovered and later recorded in 1976 by harpsichordist Igor Kipnis on a disc of favorite encores. After being captivated by its simple antiquarian charm, I too was able to acquire an original print of the work, thanks to my German friend and European “concert manager” Dr. Alfred Rosenberger, who found it at Noten Fuchs, Frankfurt’s amazing music store, where, apparently, the yellowed score had been on their shelves ever since its publication date. 

As a somewhat-related aside, the probable first harpsichord composition of the 20th century, or at least the earliest one to appear in print, is a Petite Lied by French organist/composer Henri Mulet (1878–1967). This aptly titled work of only 17 measures in 5/4 meter was issued in 1910. (See Harpsichord News, The Diapason, January 2011, p. 12, for a complete facsimile of the score.)

The solo harpsichord works of François Couperin, in a fine 19th-century edition by Johannes Brahms and Friedrich Chrysander, also found some popularity among pianists. From the musical riches to be found in Couperin’s 27 suites, came the lone musical example to be included in the 20th-century’s first harpsichord method book: Technique du Claveçin by Régina Patorni-Casadesus (1886–1961), a slim volume of only eight pages, most of them devoted to stop-changing pedal exercises (thus the genesis of my title—“Pedaling the French”). This one tiny bit of Couperin’s music is the oft-performed Soeur Monique from his 18th Ordre, a work admired and used by many church musicians—some of whom doubtless would be shocked to read in the authoritative reference work on Couperin’s titles, written by Historical Keyboard Society of North America honorary board member Jane Clark Dodgson, that “Sister Monica” may not be a religious “sister,” but refers instead to girls of ill repute, as in a “lady of the night,” according to the definition of the word Soeur by the 17th-century lexicographer Antoine Furetière (1619–1688), “our sisters, as in streetwalkers, or debauched girls.” (See Jane Clark and Derek Connon, ‘The Mirror of Human Life’: Reflections on François Couperin’s Pièces de Claveçin, London: Keyword Press, 2011, p. 170.)

II. Early recorded sounds

Beyond printed music and pedagogical writings, how did the classic French keyboard repertoire fare in the newly emerging medium of harpsichord recordings?

After giving a historical salute to the 16 rare 1908 Berlin wax cylinders that share surface noise with some barely audible Bach performed by Wanda Landowska, the earliest commercial recording of a harpsichord dates from about 1913 and was issued on the Favorite label. It preserves an anonymous performance of a work with at least tangential connections to France: the Passepied from J. S. Bach’s French Overture in B Minor (BWV 831). (See Martin Elste, Meilensteine der Bach-Interpretation, reviewed by Larry Palmer in The Diapason, June 2000.)

More easily accessible today are the earliest harpsichord recordings made in 1920 for the Gramophone Company in England by the Dolmetsch-influenced harpsichordist Violet Gordon Woodhouse (1871–1948). Her repertoire included Couperin’s L’Arlequine from the 23rd Ordre (as played on Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume 3, Pearl GEMM CD 9242) and Rameau’s Tambourin, from his Suite in E Major. Mrs. Woodhouse became something of a cult figure among British music critics (George Bernard Shaw), upper-class society (the Sitwells), and adventurous musicians (including the avant-garde composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji [1892–1988]), who wrote of Violet’s powerful musical presentations that her playing was “dignified, moving, and expressive, and of a broad, sedate beauty, completely free from any pedagogic didacticism or stiff-limbed collegiate pedantry.” (Quoted in Jessica Douglas-Home: Violet, The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse, London: The Harvill Press, 1966, p. 228.) This should put many of us in our rightful places, although Sorabji’s own excursions into keyboard literature lasting from four to nine hours in performance (example: a Busoni homage with the title Opus Clavicembalisticum) just might call his own authority into question.

Eight years younger than Woodhouse, the better-known Wanda Landowska (1879–1959) made her first commercial recordings for the Victor Company in 1923, just prior to her American concert debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. These six sides included short pieces by the three 1685 boys (Handel, Bach, and Scarlatti) as well as the Rigaudon and Tambourin from Rameau’s Suite in E Minor, and what might be considered the first recording of a contemporary harpsichord work, Landowska’s own Bourée d’Auvergne #1. 

Lesser-known players got recorded, too: Marguerite Delcour recorded Couperin’s Le Tic-toc-choc [Ordre 18] in 1924. The following year, 1925, one of Landowska’s Berlin students, Anna Linde, recorded the ubiquitous Rameau Tambourin and the even more ubiquitous Coucou by Daquin. If you recognize Linde’s name it might well be for her edition of Couperin’s L’art de toucher le Claveçin—with its translations into English and German offered side by side with the original French, and the printed music made unique by her Germanically precise “corrections” to the composer’s picturesque (but occasionally unmathematical) beaming of some quick roulades in his preludes. Both of Linde’s recorded legacy pieces sound amateurish enough that I seriously doubt that Sorabji would have enjoyed hearing these performances.

As a matter of history, however, it is quite possible that Anna Linde’s 1925 disc was the first harpsichord performance to be recorded electrically (rather than acoustically), and the difference in sound quality became even clearer in the years immediately following. A 1928 Woodhouse performance of Bach’s Italian Concerto sounds surprisingly present even today, and the performance shows—perhaps best of all her recorded legacy—what her admirers so rightly admired. Indeed her artistry is such that I have thought, often, that had Mrs. Woodhouse needed to earn her living as Landowska did, she could have eclipsed the divine Wanda as a concert harpsichordist. However, as the wife of a titled Englishman she could not make a career onstage for money . . . and that was that! It would have been fascinating to have had two such determined women competing for the title of “the world’s most famous harpsichordist.” 

Realistically, however, Landowska’s tenacity, as well as her superb musical knowledge and sensitivity, should not be denigrated in any way. The 1928 recording of her own second Bourée d’Auvergne (Biddulph LHW 016) especially highlights the rhythmic dimension of her exciting artistry.

In the United States, where Landowska was a welcome visitor during the 1920s, there were several earlier players of the harpsichord; and, not too surprisingly, all of them attempted at least some pieces by French composers. Some of these participants in harpsichord history are nearly forgotten: one of more than passing importance was the Princeton professor Arthur Whiting: a well-received artist in nearby New York City and a campus legend at Princeton, he was known for his ability to attract huge crowds of undergraduates for his popular recitals on both piano and Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord. I have not located any recordings by Professor Whiting. The New York Times did mention his concert at Mendelssohn Hall (NYC) on December 11, 1907, which included a Gigue and Rigaudon by Rameau. The unnamed reviewer praised Whiting’s playing as “clear, beautifully phrased, and skillful in ‘registration’ if that term may be used to denote the employment of the different timbres that the instrument affords.”

Writing a letter to the editor of The Times on January 11, 1926, the prominent music educator Daniel Gregory Mason offered a response to a letter from Landowska in which she made the statement that she had “single-handedly [!] restored the harpsichord to its rightful position in the world of music.” In this correspondence Professor Mason called attention to some other “‘Harpsichord Pioneers’—among whom he named the Americans: Mr. Whiting, Miss Pelton-Jones, Miss Van Buren, and Lewis Richards.”

The two ladies differed greatly: Frances Pelton-Jones was one of those wealthy women who could afford to pursue her artistic ambitions (rather similar to the would-be soprano Florence Foster Jenkins). Her recitals in New York were of the club-lady variety; baffled critics most often mentioned the stage decoration and the beauty of Pelton-Jones’s gowns. Lotta Van Buren, however, was a thoroughly professional player and harpsichord technician whose work with Morris Steinart’s instrument collection at Yale was very beneficial, as was her association with Colonial Williamsburg and its program of historical recreations, including musical ones. 

As for Lewis Richards, Mason proceeds: “Mr. Richards, who has played the harpsichord throughout Europe as a member of the Ancient Instrument Society of Paris, was, I believe, the first to appear as a harpsichordist with orchestra (the Minneapolis Symphony) in this country, and contributed much to the interest of Mrs. F. S. Coolidge’s festival in Washington . . .” 

Richards did indeed precede Landowska as the first known harpsichord soloist with a major symphony orchestra in the U. S. He was one of the few American musicians to record commercially in the 1920s. His Brunswick 10-inch discs of The Brook by Ayrlton, Musette en Rondeau by Rameau, Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith, and the Mozart Rondo alla Turca were played for me by Richards’ daughter, whom I was able to visit in her East Lansing, Michigan, home (on the day following an organ recital I had played there). The sound is somewhat compromised, for I was recording a scratchy 78-rpm disc that spun on an ancient turntable in a garage; but one gets the impression that Mr. Richards was a charismatic and musical player.  

These discs went on to make quite a lot of money in royalties, and Richards actually taught harpsichord at the Michigan State Institute of Music in East Lansing, which almost certainly certifies him as the first formally continuing collegiate teacher of harpsichord to be employed in the United States in the 20th century.

All of these players played early revival instruments. All have, therefore, used their pedal techniques to obtain a more kaleidoscopic range of colors than we may be used to. Of great interest (at least to me) is the recent emergence of curiosity about, and interest in these revival instruments and their playing techniques, frequently demonstrated by questions received from students. One of the finest concert figures of the “pedal” generations was the distinguished Yale professor Ralph Kirkpatrick (now more knowable than previously, courtesy of his niece Meredith Kirkpatrick’s recently published collection of the artist’s letters; see our review in the April 2015 issue). In his early Musicraft recordings, especially those from 1939, we are able to hear the young player show his stuff, just before his 1940 appointment to Yale, displaying superb musical mastery of his Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord. From Kirkpatrick’s program that included four individual Couperin pieces, culminating in Les Barricades Mistérieuses, and five movements from Rameau’s E-minor set, I ended this essay with the Rameau Tambourin (as played on The Musicraft Solo Recordings, Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume 2, Pearl GEMM CD9245). Kirkpatrick’s mesmerizing foot-controlled decrescendo gives a perfect example of his skill in “pedaling the French.”

(From a paper read in Montréal, May 23.)

HKSNA 2015 International Conference in Montréal

Hosted by McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, the fourth annual conclave of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (May 21–24) offered lectures, mini-recitals, and evening concerts, far too many events for any single auditor to encompass. Two papers that followed mine, Elisabeth Gallat-Morin’s beautifully illustrated “The Presence of French Baroque Keyboard Instruments in New France” and Graham Sadler’s innovative “When Rameau Met Scarlatti? Reflections on a Probable Encounter in the 1720s” attested to the depth of innovative scholarship.

McGill’s instrument roster includes the superb Helmut Wolff organ in Redpath Hall and 15 harpsichords. One third of these came from the workshop of the Montréal builder Yves Beaupré; among the other ten instruments is a 1677 single-manual Italian instrument from the collection of Kenneth Gilbert. This unique historic treasure was available for viewing and playing for small groups of attendees.

The Vermont builder Robert Hicks was the only harpsichord maker who brought an instrument for display. Max Yount demonstrated this eloquent double harpsichord in a masterful recital presentation of Marchand’s Suite in D Minor. Clavichord took center stage for Judith Conrad’s program. Karen Jacob’s thoughtful memorial tribute to Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society founder George Lucktenberg was enhanced by several solicited remembrances from others whose lives had been touched by the late iconic early keyboard figure.

Evening concerts were presented by harpsichordist/organist Peter Sykes and six former students who organized a tribute to McGill organ professor emeritus John Grew. Saturday’s concert brought the final stage of the ninth Aliénor international competition for contemporary harpsichord music. Six winning works (selected by a jury from nearly fifty submitted pieces) were performed by HKSNA President Sonia Lee (Laura Snowden: French Suite), Larry Palmer (Sviatoslav Krutykov: Little Monkey Ten Snapshots), James Dorsa (Ivan Bozicevic: If There is a Place Between, and his own composition Martinique), Andrew Collett (playing his own Sonatina for Harpsichord), and Marina Minkin (Dina Smorgonskaya: Three Dances for Harpsichord). Following an intermission during which the audience submitted ballots naming their three favorite works, Aliénor presented world premieres of two commissioned works for two harpsichords: Edwin McLean’s Sonata No. 2 (2014), played by Beverly Biggs and Elaine Funaro, and Mark Janello’s Concerto for Two (2015), played by Rebecca Pechefsky and Funaro.

And the three pieces chosen by the audience? Smorgonskaya’s Three Dances for Harpsichord, Collett’s Sonatina, and Dorsa’s Martinique. Bravi tutti.

Comments, news items, and questions are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, e-mail: [email protected].

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

“With a Lot of Help from Friends”
Post-Christmas desk clearing always reminds me not only of how cluttered my working space is, but also how much I owe to the generosity of friends and correspondents as they “keep me in the loop” about matters of mutual interest. So here follows a miscellany of unrelated, but (hopefully) fascinating items, brought to my attention because of a friend’s initiative.

Oscar Peterson
The death on December 23 of jazz great Oscar Peterson brought to a close the far-ranging career of this major keyboard artist. Richard Severo, writing in The New York Times for December 25, 2007, commented “Mr. Peterson was one of the greatest virtuosos in jazz, with a piano technique that was always meticulous and ornate and sometimes overwhelming. . . . One of the most prolific major stars in jazz history, he amassed an enormous discography. From the 1950s until his death, he released sometimes four or five albums a year. . . . Norman Granz, his influential manager and producer, helped Mr. Peterson realize [his] success, setting loose a flow of records on his own Verve and Pablo labels.”
One of the more unusual of these Pablo records was made in Los Angeles on January 26, 1976: with guitarist Joe Pass, Peterson played music from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in instrumental arrangements for acoustic guitar and CLAVICHORD. The digital re-release of this rare duo [Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-829-2] was brought to my attention by friend Linda Raney, the director of music at First Presbyterian Church, Santa Fe, NM, who had received it as a gift from a retired Episcopal priest.
Not the least of the joys of this disc comes from reading the original liner notes by Benny Green, who relates “The genesis of this album is wildly improbable, even by jazz standards. In the late summer of 1975 Oscar Peterson talked on BBC-TV with a succession of guests whose only common denominator was their commitment, either as amateurs or professionals, writers or performers, to problems of keyboard technique. One of these guests was Edward Heath, one-time Prime Minister of Great Britain, . . . [who] turned up with an instrument called the clavichord, . . . an instrument that presents intriguing enigmas, the most challenging of all being its dulcet tonal quality which defies the resources of sound recording engineers; there are times when music played on this instrument seems less like an act of premeditated artistic execution than a musical enchantment of silence.”
Peterson was so captivated by the clavichord’s musical capabilities that he determined to acquire one, with a view to making jazz on it. The Gershwin album was the result of this aural infatuation. Peterson’s inspired arrangements of Gershwin’s immortal music survive as a touching, gentle memento from this great keyboard master of jazz.

19th-Century Harpsichord Citings
From John Carroll Collins, Dallas bibliophile and reliable purveyor of esoteric musical knowledge, come these references to harpsichord connections for two outstanding Romantic-era composers: Georges Bizet and Frédéric Chopin.
“Once when we were discussing the use of the harpsichord in Paris toward the middle of the 19th-century, you asked about my sources, which at the time I could not remember. I have tried to check back on them, and following is what I was able to recover.
I found the reference to Bizet’s early keyboard instruction on the harpsichord in Bizet and His World by Mina Curtis (New York, 1958). Curtis apparently was not a musician herself, but taught in the English department at Smith College, where she counted among her devoted students the young Anne Morrow, later the wife of Charles Lindbergh. Curtis had a wide knowledge of the historical and biographical aspects of her subject, and during the preparation of her beautifully written and thoroughly researched study she amassed an impressive collection of autograph letters by Bizet and other members of his circle. On pages 13 and 14 she tells of Bizet’s early keyboard training.
One of his first teachers was his uncle, François Dalsarte (born 1811), who taught voice at the Conservatoire. This was in 1846 and 1847, when Bizet was eight and nine years old and thus too young for admittance there. At their home he shared lessons with Dalsarte’s children, Bizet’s cousins. For their lessons they used Dalsarte’s favorite instrument, a harpsichord that had belonged to Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837), wife of King Louis Napoleon of Holland and mother of Napoleon III [of France]. Curtis is sometimes vague about her sources, but I gather she found her information on Dalsarte in a book by his student Angélique Arnaud (François Dalsarte, Paris, 1882).
Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, on page 184 of his Chopin: Pianist and Teacher (translated from the French, Cambridge University Press, 1986), mentions a harpsichord performance at a private concert in Paris on 25 December 1852. A group of Bach fugues was played on an early 18th-century harpsichord by one of Chopin’s students, the Norwegian Thomas Dyke Acland Tellefsen (1823–1874), this being just over three years after Chopin’s death. Eigeldinger gives as his source the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 1852–1853, page 447.”

Historic Harpsichordists in Hungary, Italy, and the Czech Republic
Robert Tifft (Dallas), long fascinated by the recordings of Hungarian revival harpsichordist János Sebestyén, provides comprehensive information about this highly-regarded artist in a remarkable website: <http://www.jsebestyen.org&gt;. Sites devoted to other lesser-known figures of European revival history may be accessed from the same address: Italian Luciano Sgrizzi (1910–1994); Landowska disciple Ruggero Gerlin (1899–1983); the “dean of Italian harpsichordists” Egida Giordani Sartori (1910–1999)—also interesting as the close friend and biographer of legendary soprano Toti Dal Monte; younger Hungarian artist Agnes Varallyay; and, added most recently, an accurate, complete discography and biography of leading Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova.
Robert also sent a notice of the passing, on June 5, 2007, at age 64, of Hungarian harpsichordist Zsuzsa Pertis, a student of Isolde Ahlgrimm.

Fernando Valenti’s Scarlatti
Harpsichord aficionado and record collector David Kelzenberg ([email protected]) has completed his exhaustive project of locating all the Scarlatti recordings committed to long-playing discs by Fernando Valenti for Westminster Records beginning in 1951. Although the project was not ever to be comprehensive, Kelzenberg recently wrote, “To this day musicians wonder if Valenti actually managed to record all of the 545 sonatas in the Longo Edition [plus the Menuet in F]. After years of collecting scrounging, horse trading, and begging, I believe I have assembled all of [Valenti’s] Domenico Scarlatti that was ever commercially released by [the company]: 359 sonatas in all.”
David recently sent me eleven copied compact discs of these exciting, intensely musical performances. It has been a tremendous “labor of love” on Dave’s part to assemble and digitize such an extensive collection, and his gracious gift of these discs has brought much delight to this listener. Kelzenberg requests that any collector who knows of additional releases in the series contact him at the address printed above.

Trombones in Dido and Aeneas? Remembering Albert Fuller
The September 22, 2007 death of Albert Fuller brought back warm memories of several visits the fine American harpsichordist and educator made to Dallas. Perhaps the most memorable, amusing, and culinarily satisfying one occurred during the rehearsal period for the Dallas Opera’s production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in 1972. Although I had recently played harpsichord continuo for a Dido performance in Norfolk, the Opera in those days disdained local artists if they could import someone at great expense from Milan or New York. The management did, however, deign to rent my Dowd harpsichord since neither Opera nor Symphony owned such an “off-beat” instrument.
Albert had called me from New York to ask “why [the hell] they would bother to fly him such a distance when I was already there?” but I assured him that the discrimination was general, not personal, and that he should just enjoy the production (which turned out to be costumed in futuristic, space-age costumes), and charge them a high fee.
One evening Albert arrived at the Fair Park opera theatre to tune the harpsichord, but became alarmed when two trombonists entered the pit and began warming up. Perhaps, he thought, the scoring has been altered to match the costumes? But when a tuba player joined in he decided it was time to ask the musicians what was going on.
The brass players informed him that it was not Dido that was to be rehearsed that evening, but its companion work, Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci (nearly as strange a coupling as the costumes and staging). Albert was quite incensed that the management had changed the rehearsal schedule without informing him, thus resulting in his flying (first class) from New York when he would not be needed.
I received a telephone call relating this sequence of events, concluding with “Well, I’m here, so before I fly back home let’s have dinner at the best restaurant in Dallas—and charge it to the Opera!”
I had dined only once previously at The Old Warsaw, then considered one of the finest culinary experiences available in the city, so that’s where we had our leisurely and memorable meal. I don’t know if this was a prime example of “turning annoyance into pleasure” or simply the best way to ignore a scheduling snafu, but it was certainly a civilized way to deal with the matter, and remembering it reminds of a happy conversation with a distinguished fellow musician. Ave Albert, et vale.■

Comments or news items for these pages are always welcome. Please address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275; <[email protected]>.

Books about the phenomenon known as the 20th-century harpsichord revival continue to appear. Among recent publications, none is so engrossing as Violet: The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse, written by her great-niece Jessica Douglas-Home (The Harvil Press, 84 Thornhill Road, London N1 1RD; £20). The geneological connection is especially important in this instance, for the author has had full access to unpublished letters and family diaries, enabling her to give full exposure both to the public persona and the unconventional private life of the English harpsichordist and clavichord player.

Mrs. Gordon Gordon Woodhouse (Violet and her husband officially changed their name to become an unhyphenated double one) was placed by author Osbert Sitwell in that company of "human genius who form so rare a race." Critic and composer Kaikhosru Sorabji wrote that Violet's technique and musicianship "are not surpassed by any English-speaking musician whose medium of expression is a keyboard instrument." Various editions of Grove's Dictionary assign her the honor of being the first to record the harpsichord (in July 1920) and the first to play a radio broadcast on the instrument (March 1924).

Drawn to the harpsichord through the influence of Arnold Dolmetsch, she attracted to her musical salon such figures as the artists Picasso and Rodin; the impressario Diaghilev; authors Law-rence of Arabia, Wilfred Owen, Ezra Pound, Bernard Shaw, and the three Sitwells--Osbert, Sacheverall, and Edith; and eminent composers Bartok, Delius (who, in 1919, composed his Dance for her), Vaughan Williams, and Ethel Smyth (one of Violet's passionate admirers).

Passion constituted a large part of Violet's intriguing story!  Although she married Gordon Woodhouse, they agreed that the marriage would remain unconsummated, and Violet's friend Adelina Ganz even accompanied the bridal pair on their honeymoon. Four years into the marriage, Violet's lover Bill Barrington joined the household. Subsequently the ménage à trois became a ménage à cinq when Denis Tollemache and Maxwell Labouchère, in love with Violet, also took up lodgings chez Woodhouse.

In addition to this tangled web of male companionship there was a continuing saga of Violet's female friends Christabel Marshal, Radclyffe Hall (who dedicated a book of Lesbian erotic poetry to Violet), Ethel Smyth, and of Dame Ethel's friends Virginia Woolf and the Princesse de Polignac. Scandal was never far-distant from the Gordon Woodhouses, but the most titilating event of all was the murder of Gordon's two maiden aunts by their longime butler, an event that saved the Woodhouse family fortune for Gordon and allowed him to maintain Violet in the extravagent life to which she had become accustomed.

It was this pampered existence which kept her, for much of her life, away from a professional career and the recording studios. Aristocratic women of means did not play concerts for money! But when she did give concerts, Mrs. Woodhouse appeared not only as a soloist, but also with such leading musicians as Sarasate, Casals, and Lionel Tertis. Receiving glowing reviews which were the envy of many other players, she was the only possible rival to the great Landowska, and to many listeners Woodhouse was the finest harpsichordist of her generation. Jessica Douglas-Home's book presents a fascinating picture of English aristocratic and musical life from late in the Victorian era through the second World War. Well-written and beautifully produced, the book features line drawings at the beginning of each chapter, a bound-in purple bookmark-ribbon, and a generous portfolio of photographs. The author claims April 23, 1871 as Violet's birthdate (not 1872, as in Grove's), and she repeats the claim that Mrs. Woodhouse was the first artist to make harpsichord records.

But she probably wasn't. In Claude Mercier-Ythier's coffee-table extravaganza Les Clavecins (Expodif Éditions, Paris) he cites a 1914 cylinder recording on which French organist and harpsichordist Paul Brunold (1875-1948) played pieces by Couperin and Rameau on the 1732 Antoine Vater harpsichord--obviously an earlier entry for the "first to record" sweepstakes.  Mercier-Ythier's 1996 book (which I found remaindered in an Alsacian flea-market sale) carries a hefty price (750 French francs, or about $150), but it is a volume filled with elegant color plates and photographs of harpsichords and harpsichordists, historic and modern. The French text includes chapters on harpsichord history, the various national schools of harpsichord making, the harpsichord revival and modern instruments, decoration, and the recent trend toward more-or-less exact copies of historic instruments.

While coverage of French matters seems to be reasonably gounded in fact, other 20th-century items are treated with a somewhat cavalier attitude toward accuracy. In just five pages (121-126) I caught the following errors:  Landowska was born in 1879 (not 1877); her housekeeper Elsa Schunicke's name gained an extra syllable (and she was promoted to secretary); Dolmetsch did not work at Chickering's in Boston "from 1902 until 1909" (he was employed there from 1905 until 1911); Hubbard and Dowd started their harpsichord-making together in 1949 (not 1965), and Mercier-Ythier does not seem very certain about which one wrote the book Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making. Falla's puppet opera for the Princesse de Polignac (El Retablo de Maese Pedro) dates from 1923, not 1919; Poulenc composed his Concert Champêtre in 1927-28, not 1929; but why worry, it's only "modern stuff," right? Buy this one for the pictures and refer to my Harpsichord in America: A 20th-Century Revival for details!

I've not yet run across Brunold's "first" harpsichord recording, but for many years I have been a devotee of Violet Gordon Woodhouse's artistry, having searched out her too-few 78-rpm recordings. Now the complete recorded legacy is available on one compact disc: Violet Gordon Woodhouse (Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, Volume Three: Pearl GEMM CD 9242). To complete the picture of Mrs. Woodhouse gained from reading the new biography, listen to her supple playing of just about everything on this generous disc, but especially to her remarkable performance of Bach's "Italian" Concerto, made in 1927 (Woodhouse's first electric recordings). Here is music-making that confirms the high opinions of her contemporaries!

The other volumes of this series are also recommended.  Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, Volume One: Pearl GEMM CD 9124) contains 75 minutes of playing by Marguerite Delcour (1924), Anna Linde, Simone Plé; Landowska-students Alice Ehlers and Eta Harich-Schneider (disarmingly called "Harry-Schneider" in Mercier's book); Marguerite Roesgen-Champion, Julia Menz, Yella Pessl, Régina Patorni-Casadesus; and the best keyboard player from the Dolmetsch clan, son Rudolph, recorded between 1929 and 1933.

Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, Volume Two, features the first recordings by Ralph Kirkpatrick, made for Musicraft between 1926 and 1929.  Bach (Partita 5, Italian Concerto, Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue), Purcell, the Virginalists, Couperin, Rameau, and two Scarlatti Sonatas are all performed on the artist's 1909 Dolmetsch harpsichord, an instrument which had originally belonged to the composer Busoni. The record producer, Teri Noel Towe, comments, "Some listeners confuse Ralph Kirkpatrick's tenacious and unswerving commitment to the composer's intentions with dullness and mistake his exquisite attention to detail and technical accuracy for dryness.  There is a special beauty and unique warmth to Kirkpatrick's sometimes austere but always direct, 'no nonsense' performances; his interpretations are always superbly conceived, often transcendent, and occasionally hypnotic."

Another recent release is A Recital of 20th-Century Harpsichord Music (Music and Arts CD-977), Kirkpatrick's unique recital at the University of California, Berkeley, given on 26 January 1961.  This unedited concert program features coughing, applause, and the world premiere performance of Henry Cowell's Set of Four, with its typical tone clusters and the specific octave trills for the left hand, so proudly pointed out later by Mr. Kirkpatrick in his introduction to the printed score.  I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this disc, but, unfortunately, I find the performances particularly lacking in suppleness and charm, especially in the decidely "non-grazioso" fast bangup of Delius' Dance, and the startling number of misreadings and wrong rhythms in the first movement of Persichetti's [First] Sonata for Harpsichord (at that time the only one there was). Kirkpatrick played only this one movement at his recital, and his reading sent me searching for my copy of the composer's manuscript to see if it really differed so markedly from the later printed version.  It didn't!

Other works chosen for this program included Lou Harrison's Six Sonatas, Ernst Lévy's Fantasie Symphonique, and works by Peter Mieg, Halsey Stevens, Douglas Allanbrook, and David Kraehenbuehl, whose Toccate per Cembalo, together with Mel Powell's exciting Recitative and Toccata Percossa, are the best-played selections.

What possessed the producers to include Igor Kipnis' fine review of Frances Bedford's Harpsichord and Clavichord Music of the 20th Century as a major part of the accompanying booklet defies logic!  There is no information about the music on the disc, but rather a general background of 20th-century composition for harpsichord and some very Kipnis-specific examples of how Bedford's catalog is useful.  With a full program of music unfamiliar to most players and (probably) all listeners, it surely would have been helpful to provide information about the specific composers and works found on this particular compact disc. All-in-all this release has historic and archival value, but it will not do much to garner general appreciation for 20th-century harpsichord music.

Fortunately that is not the case with Into the Millennium (Gasparo GSCD-331), a brilliant offering of attractive modern works, beautifully played by harpsichordist Elaine Funaro.  It was good to hear again the riveting Raga by Penka Kouneva, Dan Locklair's The Breakers Pound (especially its idiomatic and moving Prelude), and Tom Robin Harris' Jubilate Deo, a Ligeti-inspired two-and-one-half minute minimalist romp which truly is "joyful in the Lord."  (For those who follow the score of this work, Funaro chose not to play the composer's published new ending to this piece, preferring the original one!)  Other pieces on this appealing program from the Aliénor Harpsichord Composition Competitions include Edwin McLean's Sonata [I], Nicole Clément's Covalences Multiples, Stephen Yates' Suite, and two non-Aliénor works by Isaac Nagao and Peter B. Klausmeyer.  Two harpsichords (by William Dowd and Joop Klinkhamer) were lovingly recorded in a resonant acoustic (Duke University Chapel). Exemplary notes and a striking cover photo of  a flower-decorated Reinhard von Nagel harpsichord. Brava!

And the video? Landowska, a Documentary by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Diane Pontius (AGP Productions, 16 Levering Circle, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004; 610/664-7316). The great Wanda's life is detailed in a montage of period photographs, films of 20th-century historical events, and interviews with those who knew her well (companion--secretary--student Denise Restout, Polish baritone Doda Conrad, record producer John Pfeiffer), those who heard her play (author William F. Buckley, Jr., French harpsichordist Magdeline Mangin), authors who have written about her (Alice Cash, Larry Palmer), and several other leading figures from the contemporary harpsichord scene (the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Laurence Libin, harpsichord-maker Willard Martin, and star performer Skip Sempé).

Especially vivid are the Restout sequences filmed at the home she shared with the harpsichordist, now the Landowska Center in Lakeville, CT; and the unique anecdotes from Conrad, who first met Landowska in 1912, and Pfeiffer, who recorded her final discs for RCA Victor.  Both of these men have since died.  Conrad's description of Landowska and Restout taking up lodging in a New York hotel best known as a brothel and his reference to Landowska's husband Henri Lew's propensity for visiting such institutions gives a certain added piquancy to the biography.

But, as always, it is Landowska herself who is the star of this feature!  Liberal segments from her only filmed appearance (for NBC Television's Wisdom Series, 1953) document for a new group of listeners and viewers the virtuosity of her music-making, as well as her public persona, a savvy mix of humility and self-awareness.  Responding to Jack Pfeiffer's questions, she recounts highlights of her early career (such as her memorable visit  to Tolstoy to play for him outside Moscow during a Russian winter), her delight in the natural beauty of her Connecticut home and its surroundings, and her love for the music of the past, her love of performing, and her love for her audience.

For all Landowska afficionados, this film is a reminder of her continuing place in our cultural history and in our hearts.  For those who have not yet had the opportunity to experience Landowska's artistry, it should be required viewing. Her role in the 20th-century revival of the harpsichord and early music is so central that every one of her successors owes a debt of gratitude to this pioneering figure.  Besides, her dramatic life-story, played out amidst the upheavals of 20th-century history, is more engrossing than fiction could ever be!

Italian Christmas: 

Fiesole Revisited

Reader Mark Dirksen, business manager for John-Paul Buzard Pipe Organ Builders of Champaign, Illinois, wrote in response to the Christmas excerpt from my Salzburg memoir in our December 2016 Harpsichord News column:

. . . I am writing to acknowledge your lovely reminiscence of a Christmas Day in Fiesole in 1958 because it uncannily mirrors my own.

In 2004–05 my wife and I were fortunate enough to go on a “pilgrimage to an unknown destination.” That academic year took us on many adventures: mission work in South Africa and three glorious months living in Paris to mention just two highlights.

Christmas found us in Florence. It was a lovely December day in mid-Italy, just such a one as you describe, and we motored up to Fiesole, having been told of the glorious views. And lo! There was that same Monastery and the same Chapel, with Christmas Day Mass in progress: the monks, a handful of parishioners, and two very blessed Americans. It was truly a Christmas to remember­—followed by a lovely picnic lunch beside the Arno in a plaza all to ourselves. Thanks for bringing that memory back!

Paul Wolfe Remembered

Born in Waco, Texas, in 1929, Paul Wolfe grew up in the small town of Hico (a unique name that he used as a prime element of his e-mail address). Only 16 when he graduated from high school, Paul continued his education at the University of Texas (Austin), earning his undergraduate degree at 19! A fine pianist, he became interested in the harpsichord and was counseled to study the instrument with either Ralph Kirkpatrick or Wanda Landowska. Paul chose the latter option, and, together with Rafael Puyana and Irma Rogell, had the distinction of being in the final group of students to be taught by the iconic artist.

For an interesting and comprehensive report on Wolfe’s Landowska years and his career as a harpsichordist in Europe and the United States, I refer our readers to the feature article, “Mamusia: Paul Wolfe Remembers Wanda Landowska” (The Diapason, October 2012, pp. 23–25), copiously illustrated with ten rare photographs. Author Craig Smith, currently a freelance writer on music and the arts, was formerly a classical music critic for the Santa Fe New Mexican and a longtime friend of Paul Wolfe. When I invited Paul to reminisce about his Landowska years at our final Southern Methodist University summer harpsichord workshop in New Mexico (Summer 2008), he agreed to speak to the class, but only if Craig Smith were engaged to be the “host questioner” for the interview.

My own fondly remembered friendship with Paul Wolfe came about when Nick Fritsch of Lyrachord Records decided to transfer to compact disc and reissue Paul’s path-breaking harpsichord recordings made in the mid-1950s for Expériences Anonymes. Rightly concerned that many listeners in the 1990s might not understand the colorful sounds and frequent changes of registration available on earlier revival harpsichords, Nick commissioned me to write an essay, “When They Had Pedals,” to be published together with Paul’s original extensive notes on the music. As a consistent attendee of the Santa Fe Opera I travel every summer to that most wonderful arts mecca; so, during one of these annual visits I was able to make an appointment to meet and speak with Paul Wolfe concerning the reissue project.

He liked my essay, I enjoyed his company, and consistently, through the ensuing years, we continued to share quite a number of delightful dinners or lunches at several of Santa Fe’s better restaurants. Later in that tradition it was settled that our favorite spot was SantaCafé, where, on a shaded dining patio, Paul could order his favorite lunch—an all-beef frankfurter on a bun, with sauerkraut slaw, jalapeño mustard, and rosemary potato chips, Santa Fe’s take on New York-style cuisine.

Paul’s association with and eventual marriage to Brigitta Lieberson (also known as Vera Zorina) brought him into a highly artistic family that included the composer Peter Lieberson and his wife, the irreplaceable mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, both of whom thus became Paul’s stepchildren. Mental vignettes of his love for two pet dachshunds and his racy sports car driving at “Presto” speed, my memories of Paul are those of a vibrant and charming human being who was blessed with a fine musical talent as well as a quiet gift for warm friendship. No longer playing the harpsichord, Paul turned to writing as an artistic outlet. The resulting novel Choices (2006), a racy story of intrigue at a fictitious Italian music festival (cleverly dubbed Lospello by the crafty author), is a good read for those not offended by adult situations and language.

And now his hands and voice are stilled: Paul passed away on Christmas Day 2016, the last of Landowska’s American students. The two Lyrachord double-disc albums, When They Had Pedals, issued in 1998, comprise works by Frescobaldi and the English virginalists (LEMS-8033), played on Wolfe’s 1907 Pleyel instrument, and
G. F. Handel’s Suites 3, 8, 11, 13, 14, and 15 (LEMS-8034), performed on the well-loved Rutkowski harpsichord Wolfe purchased in 1958.

Masterful Froberger by Glen Wilson

Referencing admired compact discs brings us to 23 Suites for Harpsichord plus Tombeau and Lamentation by the 17th-century composer Johann Jacob Froberger, recorded by harpsichordist Glen Wilson. American-born, a Juilliard graduate who studied with Albert Fuller, then a favored pupil of Gustav Leonhardt (1971–75), Glen Wilson has pursued his stellar career in Holland and Germany. The music heard on this two-disc album from Naxos provides more than two hours of evocative and individual harpsichord playing. I recommend this set highly and suggest that referencing Wilson’s extensive 15-page online essay (in which he sets forth his well-researched ideas that form the bases for the performances on Naxos 8.573493-94) will provide all readers a fascinating study of both composer and player.

An Internet search for “Glen Wilson Harpsichordist” will lead directly to his website: www.glenwilson.eu/. After chuckling at the home page’s whimsical drawing “Flying Harpsichord” by Emma Wilson, age 7 (1997), click on Articles and Sound Clips to access Article 6 (the Naxos-connected one). Also of immense interest and import is Article 1, “The Other Mr. Couperin,” in which Wilson, a deft and determined musicological sleuth, presents the probable answer to a dichotomy that has puzzled me for a number of years: why is Louis Couperin’s harpsichord music so much more polished and interesting than his compositions for the organ? Read Wilson’s quite remarkable online report and consider his well-reasoned conclusion!

A Recital Program by J. William Greene

Finally, in a fortuitous e-mail, I received a program recently played at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, by J. William Greene. Readers of this column may remember encountering Greene’s winsome compositions for organ or harpsichord, especially his Christmas Ayres and Dances (see Harpsichord News, June 2015, p. 11).

In Part One of his recital the artist played a Peter Fisk single-manual harpsichord (2011), tuned in meantone. Works performed were by Frescobaldi, Dirck Janszoon Sweelinck (son of the better-known Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck), Delphin Strungk, Dieterich Buxtehude, and (to continue our previous theme) the Suite XXVII (27) by J. J. Froberger, a formerly incomplete set of pieces now fleshed out to suite-length, thanks to several recent discoveries of additional source material. This suite begins with the short, but extremely pictorial Allemande, “written to document a marine tragedy that took place on the Rhine [River].” (A facsimile of the original manuscript is to be found in the Froberger/Wilson article cited above.)

For Part Two of this imaginative program, Dr. Greene offered four Couperin preludes from L’art de toucher le clavecin (recently the focus of Harpsichord News), and the artist confided that he added Prelude Four as an encore! The remaining selections were J. S. Bach’s Ouverture, BWV 820, Carlo Antonio Campioni’s Sonata II in E Major, and Fandango by Padre Antonio Soler. The harpsichord was a Frank Hubbard French 18th-century double-manual instrument from 1979, tuned in a well-temperament.

I am certain that a “Zugabe” [Encore] was well earned, and could only wish that I had been present to hear this decidedly unusual harpsichord repertory. Bravo!