Wanda Landowska

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Wanda Landowska, portrayed by Emil Orlík , 1917

Wanda (Aleksandra) Landowska (born July 5, 1879 in Warsaw , Russian Empire ; died August 16, 1959 in Lakeville , Connecticut ) was a Polish harpsichordist and pianist .

Artistic career

Landowska received her first piano lessons at the age of three. At fourteen she graduated from the Warsaw Conservatory . After studying composition with Heinrich Urban in Berlin, she became a teacher at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and worked intensively on early music and the harpsichord playing. From 1913 to 1919 she taught at the Berlin University of Music . After a brief interlude in Basel , she taught at the École Normale de Musique in Paris in 1920 . In 1923 she made her first recordings after she had already recorded eight piano pieces for the Welte-Mignon reproduction piano in the recording studio of M. Welte & Söhne in 1905 . In 1925 she founded the school "École de Musique Ancienne" in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt , where she held summer courses and concerts every year. She has taught, among others, Alice Ehlers, Eta Harich-Schneider, Ralph Kirkpatrick and Rafael Puyana . From 1925 to 1928 she taught at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (USA).

Wanda Landowska has been playing on a modernized harpsichord from the French pianoforte factory Pleyel since 1903 , which combined the keel mechanics with elements of the modern concert grand and with which she was initially successful in professional circles. She and her harpsichord playing found widespread use when she appeared in 1912 with a new harpsichord model built by Pleyel according to her wishes. This type had a disposition extended by a 16 'register, as Landowska had got to know from a historical original by Hieronymus Hass in the Brussels Museum, and a nasal 8' in the second manual as the fifth register. The "Landowska model" went into series production and became the model for new harpsichord designs by many other manufacturers in the 20th century, until half a century later, as faithful as possible, replicas of historical originals became popular among interpreters and instrument makers.

Landowska motivated composers to write for this new type of harpsichord . Manuel de Falla dedicated a concerto for harpsichord and orchestra to her in 1926, and Francis Poulenc composed the Concert champêtre pour clavecin et orchester FP.049 in 1927/1928. As the first harpsichordist led 1933 the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach on continuous and full.

Escape and Robbery

Because of her Jewish descent, Landowska fled to the part of France that was not occupied by the German Wehrmacht in June 1940. She had to leave her extensive music library, valuable manuscripts and her famous collection of musical instruments behind in Paris. On September 20, 1940 Herbert Gerigk confiscated her property from the " Special Staff Music " in the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg for the Occupied Territories (ERR) and had the instruments packed in 54 special boxes transported to Berlin. Official protests against the theft of art from French cultural property were contradicted with the argument that Landowska was not a French woman, but a Jewish woman with a Polish passport.

Wanda Landowska was able to get a visa for the USA and embarked in Lisbon in November 1941. In 1947 she found a new home in Lakeville , where she taught again after 1950. At the age of seventy-five she gave her farewell concert in New York.

Large parts of their collection were lost and were thought to have been destroyed in the bombing . Various instruments later appeared at auctions in Belgium, Canada and Australia. Wanda Landowska did not receive any compensation.

Significance in music history

Wanda Landowska made an outstanding contribution to the rediscovery of the keel instruments and thus also gave an important impetus for historical performance practice . The Bulgarian-French pianist Alexis Weissenberg was strongly influenced in his Bach interpretations by Wanda Landowska .

Compositions

Before February 26, 1896 in Berlin

Exhibitions

  • 2009/10 The Lady with the Harpsichord - Wanda Landowska and Early Music , Berlin Musical Instrument Museum
  • 2011: Memories of Wanda Landowska , Bachhaus Eisenach

Fonts

  • Wanda Landowska and Henri Lew-Landowski: Musique Ancienne . Mercure de France, Paris 1909 (French)

literature

  • Ingo Harden, Gregor Willmes: Pianist Profiles. 600 pianists: their biography, their style, their recordings . Wanda Landowska. 1st edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2008, ISBN 978-3-7618-1616-5 , p. 413-415 .
  • Jutta Dick, Marina Sassenberg (ed.): Jewish women in the 19th and 20th centuries . Lexicon to life and work, Reinbek 1993 ISBN 3-499-16344-6
  • Martin Elste : Wanda Landowska's Musique ancienne. The legendary pamphlet of a musical Amazon: Topics, Editions, Concordance, in: Yearbook 2016 of the State Institute for Music Research Prussian Cultural Heritage ed, v. Simone Hohmaier. Schott, Mainz 2019, pp. 235-276.

Web links

Commons : Wanda Landowska  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Dangel and Hans-W. Schmitz: Welte-Mignon -Reproduktionen / Welte-Mignon Reproductions. Complete catalog of recordings for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano 1905–1932 / Complete Library Of Recordings For The Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano 1905–1932 . Stuttgart 2006. ISBN 3-00-017110-X . P. 466
  2. ^ Willem den Vries: Wanda Landowska and her 'Musique Ancienne'. In: Robbery and Restitution ed. by Inka Bertz and Michael Dorrmann, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0361-4 , p. 219.
  3. ^ Willem den Vries: Wanda Landowska and her 'Musique Ancienne'. P. 222
  4. ↑ Source: Wanda Landowska's diary
personal data
SURNAME Landowska, Wanda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Landowska, Wanda Aleksandra (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish harpsichordist and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw , Poland
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 1959
Place of death Lakeville , Connecticut